Change in Brew Philosophy - Part2 - Heading Southbound

In part1 of our series covering KBC2.0, we highlighted how we essentially blew up half of our brew program and the reasons behind that decision. We then discussed how beers released under the KBC2.0 monicker represent a confluence of many changes (some small and some large) we are trying to showcase and evolve at Kyoto Brewing. As examples, we finished up by quickly highlighting how we are starting to change our malt + hop sourcing.

We took a pause, and in a separate post explained our change in art direction for our KBC2.0 products and that we started working with a new design team. As we look towards 2025, that change in direction will start to permeate across all of our products. We’ll have more details to share with you soon.

Now we can resume discussing further changes that are afoot at KBC.

In this post, we’ll discuss our growing love for NZ hops.

How it all began

In Mar 2023, while heading around Japan to do some reconnaissance work and talk to breweries that had a centrifuge, we had an opportunity at the start of our journey to visit the fine folks over at West Coast Brewing (herein WCB).

Despite being open for several years and meeting Derrek, owner and managing director, at several beer venues/events, this was our first time to see his brewery in person and so we were given a tour.

As inevitably happens when breweries do brewery tours, we love to take a peek at one another’s ingredients. In this instance, when WCB opened up their fridge, we immediately noticed quite a few big silver boxes that had the words “Freestyle” emblazoned on the side as well as a sticker that said “NZ hops”. Derrek, noticing what had drawn our eye, then proceeded to talk about not only the quality of hops coming out of Freestyle but his interactions with the amazing husband/wife duo running their operations.

Fast forward a few months and I, Paul, found myself on a plane heading to New Zealand (herein NZ) alongside Derrek (WCB), James (Black Tide co-founder and head brewer) and Matt (Sakamichi Brewing co-founder and head brewer).

What was the goal of heading to NZ? To get a basic understanding of the hop situation down under by visiting a few farms and talking to the farmers tilling the land; the operational ground crew on how they process the hops; the scientists behind the R&D on improving upon existing hops and creating new products, and lastly a passionate hoard of brewers already incorporating large amounts of NZ hops into their breweries.

Freshness all year round

Up until that point, similar to a lot of breweries, we had used NZ hops sparingly but we never used it in any focused or concerted manner. Again, like those breweries, the majority of our hops came from America.

The wonderful thing about hops from the Southern Hemisphere; however, is that their window for harvest was essentially the opposite to the Northern Hemisphere - our winter was their summer and vice versa. Whereas hops are harvested in America generally around September and then loaded onto containers and ferried to Japan for Feb-Mar arrival, hops in NZ are harvested in Mar and ferried to Japan for Aug-Sep arrival.

Furthermore, when looking at hop growing regions in the US, the vast majority are located in Washington and Idaho state on the West Coast, clustered around the Yakima region - between the 46 and 48th latitude parallel.

When looking at the hop farms in NZ, they are clustered in certain areas on the South Island between the 42nd to 45th parallel.

For local reference, that would be the equivalent of Sapporo to Wakkanai latitude.

In choosing to incorporate NZ hops more than we had in the past, we are essentially able to have 2 windows of fresh hops coming to us.

Unique Taste & Aromas

Given NZ’s remote geographic location, the number of plants and animals that are unique to the nation are some of the highest numbers in the world. Similarly, the hops that grow in NZ are very distinctive in their character and can only be found there.

Originally, in the early 19th century, NZ produced English and German style hops but as WWI cut off NZ from Europe, NZ tried to import varieties from the US. Those hops, as they were, became susceptible to local disease and so NZ had to cross their American hops with the more sturdy UK varieties. As a result, NZ started to deviate on the types of hops they produced early on in the 20th century.

Whether it is the heavy lime character of Motueka, or the exotic passionfruit character of Riwaka, or the wonderful white wine character of Nelson Sauvin, the continued crossing of different hop varietals combined with the unique soil composition and close proximity to grape vineyard has meant that as time has progressed so, too, has the gap between NZ’s hops compared to their original English, German and American progenitors.

In a bid to bring greater diversity of flavours to our products, we’ve decided to not only increase the amount of NZ hops we are purchasing but we greatly increased the varietals we are working into our recipes. 

Breaking Away from the Pack

Traditionally, farmers grew hops and left the marketing, selling and continued customer relations to the consortium or union they belonged to. The idea of having the farmers concentrate on farming sounds like a good one, in principle. This is especially true if they can just focus on farming and the consortium spends a lot of money on equipment to help out all the farmers in the collective.

However, what happens to the hops they produce? Sometimes, the same varietal of hops (ex: Motueka) that were harvested on the same day by all the farmers are combined. This means that any variation you might have had on your hops gets averaged out. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it ensures if you had a relative bad year, you are lifted up by the stronger farms. On the other, you aren’t really incentivised to go above and beyond.

Nowadays, it’s more common for farms to want to break away from those types of consortiums and try to do business directly with the consumer - in this case, the breweries. Via consortium, in order to be able to select your own lot of hops, sometimes you need to order up to 2500kgs of hops. For small breweries in Japan, a lot of them don’t even consume that much in a year. Luckily, a lot of farmers are willing to bring those minimum requirements down to as little as 20kg.

This year, for NZ hops, we are sourcing hops from 4 different farms from 5 different fields/areas.

What does it all mean?

Over the coming months, the number of beers that we release that include NZ hops will continue to increase. As we release those beers, we will continue to provide additional details that paint a narrative as to why we chose those hops and decided to work with those farmers.

We have quite a few exciting products that are in planning and we can’t wait to get those into your hands.

For now, we’ll leave you here. In our next article, we’ll shift focus to US farms as we’ll actually be heading there in a few days time. We’ll discuss what goes into hop selection.