New Vera Hop hits WV market

A new tropical-tasting hop variety, bred and developed by a US Department of Agriculture funded program has now hit the West Virginia market, and it’s a winner. Welcome Vera.

The first West Virginia beer to use the new Vera hop has just been released by Weathered Ground Brewery (WGB) in Cool Ridge. That beer, Vera Good IPA, was brewed as a small pilot batch so the brewery could get a good feel for the characteristics of the hop.

“The hop flavor and aroma meets the expectations of the marketing,” says Weathered Ground’s Sam Fonda.

Juicy, tropical, citrus, stone fruit, and pineapple are some of the words Fonda uses to describe the hop’s flavor characteristics.

With the pilot batch only available at the brewery taproom, Fonda adds, “We’re excited to brew a large batch very soon so we can share it with the rest of our markets in West Virginia. Don’t be surprised to see this one in a can before long.”

Vera: A product of USDA research

It was just back in June that the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) announced the release of the new aroma hop—official name: USDA-ARS Vera. According to ARS, notable characteristics of the Vera hop include: a complex, tropical, stone-fruit, and citrus aroma that is consistent between the dry rub and final beer. They also note its resistance to the hop powdery mildew pathogen.

Breeding and testing for growth habits, sensory characteristics, and production values of a new hop variety takes many years to prove its suitability for the commercial market. Vera originated in 2011 from a former Washington State University (WSU) hop breeding program in Prosser, WA. It is a cross between the Brewers Gold hop and a couple of wild American hops. USDA-ARS says Vera initially gained interest due to its aroma profile. It consistently ranked highly in annual data-gathering sensory events.

The aroma profile of Vera, as described by brewers, is tropical, stone fruit, and citrus, and the hop ranked first place in two consecutive years in sensory analyses of approximately 30 experimental public lines in 2022 and 2023. Vera has been primarily evaluated by brewers in pale ales and lagers.

Brewing with Vera

For WGB’s Vera Good IPA, Fonda says “For our base malt we used Carolina Pilsner from Carolina Malt House, along with some of their malted wheat and Vienna malt. As with most of our hazy/juicy IPAs, we topped it off with some flaked oats.

“We used our preferred neutral American yeast for IPAs. This is not the yeast we use in our more hazy/juicy IPAs because it tends to flocculate, but we used it for convenience in this small batch and the beer should stay pretty hazy for the few days that it’s on tap.” He noted that when he brews the larger batch, it will likely be fermented with their preferred English yeast strain that they use in cloudy IPAs.

“In the pilot batch, no hops were added until a whirlpool addition in the kettle,” he explains, “where we just added a very small amount of Centennial and Citra. All the Vera hops were used in the dry-hop addition during fermentation. We put in 10.5 ounces of it in the 15 gallon batch.”

Is it a breakthrough hop

Does Vera break new ground on the aroma/taste front? Probably not. But what it does offer is a very tasty, reliable, disease resistant variety for U.S. hop growers to use in competition with the more tropical-flavored New Zealand hops that have become very popular these days. And because it was developed under a government-agency program, it is not patented. This makes it available to all hop farmers without a license — a fact that could make the hop less costly to brewers, assuming it catches on with growers.

“The hop is great,” Fonda says.

Fonda obtained his Vera hops from Hollingbery & Son out of Yakima, Washington. Hollingbery is supported in our region by its sales rep, Alexa Long, who resides in Fayetteville, WV. A fresh batch of Vera should be available to West Virginia brewers later this fall following the American hop harvest.