The world’s second-oldest beverage keeps on bubbling along.
The other day Patrick Hayes invited a visitor to join him and two colleagues for a wide-ranging chat about….beer. In their professional guises, Hayes, Tom Shellhammer, and Shaun Townsend represent a sizable chunk of Oregon State University’s renowned research and teaching programs in fermentation science—which covers not just beer but bread, cheese, wine, and distilled spirits. What emerged was an afternoon’s pleasant meditation on the history, current status, and future prospects of the world’s most venerable, and arguably most popular, beverage.
The Middle East, 10,000 BC
Ancient people collect wild grains in stone dishes. A careless cave person leaves them out in the rain. Wild yeasts waft through the air and settle in the mush. Magic happens: yeast ferments the grain’s sugars and a bubbly brew is born. Later, people get around to making bread. Barley (Hordeum vulgare) becomes one of the world’s first domesticated grains.
Read more on the OSU barley page.
Britain, 800–1500
Cottage brewers flavor their beer with “gruit”—mixtures of aromatic plants like horehound, yarrow, and bog myrtle. These un-hopped ales became the signature brew style in Britain.
Heather, juniper, other herbs were used in gruit mixtures. Some of them may have been hallucinogenic.”
– Pat Hayes
FACTOID
Early Britons gathered wild hop-like plants and ate them raw as salad. The plants were thought to have originated in Egypt.
Flanders, around 1200
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.
Germany, 1516
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.
Europe, 1600s through 1800s
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.
America, 1600s through 1800s
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.
European varieties of hops came over with the immigrants. These probably crossed with indigenous varieties to produce new strains.”
– Shaun Townsend
Oregon, 1862
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.
Oregon, 1867
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.”
Oregon, 1893
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, 1930s
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.
Oregon, 1930s
A European barley cultivar, ‘Hannchen,’ comes to dominate Willamette Valley production through the 1950s.
FACTOID
India pale ale, invented in the 1780s, was brewed with high-alpha hops that made the beer extra bitter and kept it from spoiling during its passage to India.
Oregon, 1966
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.
Late 1960s
‘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.
America, late 20th century
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.
Oregon, 1980s
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.
With the advent of craft brewing, the downward trend in barley production started to flatten and, optimistically, reverse in the last 10 to 20 years. These brewers like exotic hops, and they are using straight barley malt with no adjuncts. This is transforming the beer industry.”
– Pat Hayes
Oregon, 1995
A new research and teaching program in fermentation science is established at Oregon State University.
Learn more about OSU’s fermentation science program
Oregon, early 2000s
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.’
FACTOID
Hulled barley has a tight, fibrous coat that has to be ground off, removing some of the nutritive value of the grain. Naked barley doesn’t have to be processed in this way.
Oregon, early 21st century
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.
Related article: “Barley no longer an afterthought in beer flavor“
Oregon, 2010
Indie Hops founders Roger Worthington and Jim Solberg donate $1 million to OSU to start a breeding program for aroma-style hops.
Oregon’s Willamette Valley, with its milder, moister climate, is a perfect place to grow aroma hops.”
– Tom Shellhammer
Oregon, 2011–2012
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.
Oregon, 2015
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.
Learn more about the OSU Malt House and Grain/Malt Lab
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Oregon 2050. What’s ahead?
Craft beer, once a trendy niche product, continues its mainstreaming.
- Craft beer, once a trendy niche product, continues its mainstreaming.
- Industry consolidates, again.
- Barley and hops continue to be developed for subtle flavors.
- “Terroir” continues to be prized, and some brewers search out locally sourced ingredients.
- Climate change will pose challenges on the farm.
- Technology will continue to be crucial in both research and application.
The evolution of beer segment is fun!