A $1 million gift from brewing magnate Carlos Alvarez funds a major upgrade of OSU’s research brewery, including a new, fully automated micro-brewing setup.

Research brewery acquires a new mini-malter. Built by OSU engineering students, the machine looks like a chunky R2-D2 and can malt barley in small quantities, so students and researchers can test a wide variety of recipes in small batches.

Indie Hops founders Roger Worthington and Jim Solberg donate $1 million to OSU to start a breeding program for aroma-style hops.

Hayes’s team starts probing the flavor characteristics of barley—a mild-mannered grain hitherto prized only for its starch contribution. They cross-breed two barley varieties (one is OSU’s ‘Full Pint’) and produce 200 new progeny. Then they malt each variety, make a tiny batch of beer, and subject it to taste tests.

Pat Hayes starts work on breeding a “naked” barley variety that will grow well in the Willamette Valley. “Naked” means the kernels aren’t encapsulated in a tough coat of cellulose, hemi-cellulose, and lignin. He scores in 2014 with a variety he names (…wait for it…) ‘Buck.’

A new research and teaching program in fermentation science is established at Oregon State University.

Craft brewing shakes the industry like a slow earthquake, with Portland at the epicenter. A new establishment called a “brew pub” catches on, thanks to a change in the law permitting brewers to serve beer on the premises. (It used to be illegal.) BridgePort Brewery and Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. open in 1984; the next year the McMenamin brothers open the Hillsdale Brewery, and in 1985 came the Portland Brewing Co.

The brewing industry consolidates: brewing companies get bigger, beer tastes homogenize, mass production and economies of scale propel brewing into a mega-business. Starting in 1986, barley acreage declines from nearly 14 million acres to just above 2 million acres in 2014.

‘Cascade’ becomes the workhorse hop of the brewing industry after Coors Brewing Co., looking for a disease-resistant, high-alpha hop with a distinctive flavor, offers to buy it for $1 a pound.

Austrian-born research geneticist Alfred Haunold comes to OSU. His legendary research team produces superstars such as ‘Cascade,’ released in 1972; also ‘Willamette,’ ‘Sterling,’ ‘Liberty,’ ‘Mt. Hood,’ and ‘Santiam,’ among others.