They are great with customer service, but I did their pre-order, forgot about, and then ordered some of the same hops from YVH a couple weeks later. I have had the YVH hops in my possession for over a month now. LDC is just the distributer chasing the highest volume or price and Label Peeler must not be at the top of their stack. I’m not in a hurry for my pre-order, but I am annoyed that they have had my roughly $50 since late September or early October, whenever they first announced the presale. Not huge money, but enough to matter
Hey All, we here at YVH feel the need to chime in. Let’s talk about the facts.
Total crop yields this year were up overall from 1,520 lbs/acre in 2014 – 1,613 lbs/acre in 2015. Did we have drought? Yes. Did some varieties do better than others? Yes. Are there less hops overall that would slow down availability to you the homebrewer? Not really. There is no hop shortage, the shortage is in the dedication to supplying to homebrewers vs. the bigger guys.
This is an excerpt from the USDA National Hop Report for 2015 -
Production for Idaho, Oregon, and Washington in 2015 totaled 78.8 million pounds, up 11 percent from the 2014 crop of 71.0 million pounds. Production increased in all three States; 30 percent in Oregon, 26 percent in Idaho, and 6 percent in Washington. Acreage increased in all three States; 22 percent in Oregon, 30 percent in Idaho, and 11 percent in Washington. United States yield at 1,807 pounds per acre, decreased 61 pounds from a year ago. These are the highest acres harvested and production on record in Idaho going back to 1944 and the highest acres harvested on record in Washington going back to 1915.
Washington growers produced 75 percent of the United States hop crop in 2015. Cascade, Zeus, Simcoe, Centennial, and Columbus/Tomahawk, were the leading varieties in Washington, accounting for 52 percent of the State’s hop crop. In Oregon, Nugget and Cascade were the major varieties, accounting for 47 percent of the State’s hop production. In Idaho, Zeus, Cascade, and Chinook were the major varieties, accounting for 44 percent of the State’s hop production.
Here is a link to the USDA National Hop Report for 2015 if you would like to read more; http://usahops.org/userfiles/image/1450466405_2015%20National%20Hop%20Report.pdf
Yakima Valley Hops buys directly from the farms and producers (pelletizers etc). And then we turn around and offer them up to you guys. We are here in Hop Central - Humilis lupus Ground Zero. We are dedicated to the home brew community period. This is our bread & butter.
There was a comment earlier in this thread about - no 2015 hop crop being available, and if it was, it was 2014 being passed off as 2015. This is not true for YVH customers. We believe in transparency. We put the crop year on all of our packaging. We have been getting in the 2015 crop since October.
We’d also like to say thank you to our loyal customers and those of you who buy from us. We are a new(er) outfit and we’ve had some growing pains. But we want each and every one of you to know that we are dedicated to the home brew community, and we appreciate your continued support.
We do sell to the craft brew community as well. Yet, our focus here is on helping small startup breweries get their hands on the same quality and variety of hops as the big breweries. Without sacrificing availability, variety, and crop year to the homebrewer. Lets face it, the real innovation starts at home, some homebrewers are the next craft brewery.
Take Away
-
YVH has the current hop crop available to home brewers before anyone else.
-
We buy directly from the farms and producers (pelletizers etc).
-
We are transparent with crop year, we put it on all of our packaging.
We welcome any questions or comments
Cheers & Happy Brewing
YVH
Thank you for the good info. I’m a loyal YVH customer who appreciates the transparency, quality and huge selection, including new experimental varieties. Thanks !
ditto
PM me and I’ll give you an email addy. Or contact Ted through the ebay store. He is shipping 2015 crop now and they’re the best hops I’ve ever bought.
I’m curious why you think this is necessarily the whole story. I’ve contacted the CEO of YCH Hops to get his side of things. Hopefully Drew and I will present that in the podcast.
This year’s hop harvest was great in both quantity and quality. And we are not necessarily the last to get hops. YCH is now packaging for homebrewers. Great new packages, BTW.
FWIW, Ted from Hop Heaven drives over the the Yakima area and hand selects bales of hops. Seeing that he’s a Grand Master BJCP, his senses are pretty good Last year he bought over 35K lb. He also has his own pellet mill to make the pellets you get from him.
I wonder when hop school signups will be.
This and thanks for joining us here!
Thanks for that. I’m looking forward to hear what YCH has to say about this.
Epic thread response from YVH…I know where I will be buying my hops from for now on!
Ahhh yes, every 4-5 years “the sky is falling” and there will be no hops left for any of us . . . heh heh.
Fear not fellow brewers, there will always be hops. And if the PNW can’t supply enough there IS a resurgence of hop fields popping up all across the Empire State!
Plus they have pimp hophead apparel! I love my Citra hat and YVH hoodie.
Yeah, got one of their t-shirts. Pretty cool.
I have some koozies.
Appropriate, quality T-shirts for the ladies, that went over well from the NHC visit. Just sayin’. Koozies are a nice touch.
Regarding the hops, +1 for YVH. They are not my desired yearly go-to supplier but a plan B, and I was surprised at all the variety and quality of hops I got from them. Going to go dry-hop right now. The hops I have on hand from them are really good and perfect for my needs.
Finally just ordered my hops. I was planning to order in December and got distracted by the holidays and just realized I hadn’t picked up anything.
I’ve been itching to brew my DIPA recipe again with this specific hop blend. Starting to get excited now.
As I mentioned, I contacted a guy I know who’s the CEO of YCH. Drew and I will have more on next week’s podcast, but here’s a brief reply…“This has me baffled. We ship LD at the same rate we ship every brewer in the US, which is as soon as processed in the fall, so I’m not sure where this info is coming from. We ship LD their homebrewer inventory every week.”
I’ll bet on Label Peelers shooting out a salty email before knowing the full story. It’s happened plenty of times before. I unsubscribed after their whole “we hate this company down in Florida that also sells wine kits” shenanigans. Pretty sure they’re the reason WinExpert has minimum pricing on certain kits now.