A European barley cultivar, ‘Hannchen,’ comes to dominate Willamette Valley production through the 1950s.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture starts a hop research program in Corvallis, collaborating with Oregon State researchers. A key objective: developing varieties resistant to downy mildew, a scourge that will nearly wipe out Oregon’s hop industry in the 1950s.

Scientists at Oregon Agricultural College put in the first experimental hop plantings on the Corvallis campus. The word “hops” appears for the first time in the college’s course catalog.

Oregon’s first hop farm is planted by William Wells on the bottomlands of the Willamette River. The nearby town of Independence will gain renown as the “Hop Center of the World.”

Colonists plant barley to feed their livestock and make their own breads and brews. Colonial home brew tends to English-style ales, sometimes flavored with American wild hops.

Henry Weinhard starts Weinhard Brewery in northwest Portland. By the turn of the century, he is a millionaire and his brand is a household name. Weinhard’s beer is shipped across the Pacific to the Philippines and China. The company survives Prohibition (1919–1935) by brewing “near beer” (<0.5 percent alcohol), and root beer and other sweet sodas.

Research into hop agronomy begins in Germany in the late 1800s. Hopped beer styles cross the Channel, gradually eroding the popularity of the traditional darker, unhopped British ales.

The Duke of Bavaria takes a stand with a new “Reinheitzgebot” (“purity”) law, decreeing that beer could contain only barley, hops and water. The law recognized and reinforced the evolving German taste for hop-flavored brew.

Hops have been domesticated, and brewers from the lands that became Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany use them to flavor their brews. The ones with higher alpha acids (chemicals residing in the lupulin glands of hop cones) also have a preservative effect.