How wildfire smoke may start to impact your favorite beer
On Labor Day weekend 2020, multiple wildfires broke out across Oregon. When it was all over, they had killed 11 people, burned more than 1 million acres, and blanketed the entire region in apocalyptic levels of smoke.
It was the worst spate of wildfires the state had ever seen, and it marked a significant shift in Pacific Northwest agriculture. In the five years since, wildfire smoke has become a persistent fact of life in the region, impacting not just the people who live there but the crops that are grown.
Hops are a crucial part of the region’s agriculture — more than 98% of U.S. hops are grown in the Pacific Northwest, with a 2024 farm gate value of $450 million, according to Maggie Elliot, science and communications director for Hop Growers of America, an industry group. They are also particularly susceptible to smoke taint.
While the 2020 fires were immediately concerning for wine grapes, there was initially less attention paid to hops. So Tom Shellhammer, professor of fermentation science at Oregon State University (OSU), set out to change that. Since 2022, Shellhammer has received around $250,000 in funding from the Hop Research Council to study how wildfire smoke affects hops — and, by extension, how it impacts the taste of beer.
As climate change has made wildfires more frequent and more intense, it’s increasingly important to understand how the plants and the resulting beer are affected. “Smoke has been persistent enough with hop growers that it’s not an occasional thing,” said Shellhammer. “It’s almost like a smoke season.”
