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Dalhousie University has teamed up with Tatamagouche Brewing Company (www.tatabrew.com) to breed new disease-resistant hop varieties for the Nova Scotia craft beer industry.

At the end of June, Hans Christian Jost, owner of Tatamagouche Brewing Company, traveled to Oregon with Dr Sean Myles, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Agriculture at Dalhousie University and Canada Research Chair in Agricultural Genetic Diversity (www.cultivatingdiversity.org).

Together they collected pollen from mildew resistant hop varieties housed by the USDA’s hop collection, which contains hundreds of different types of hops.

Now back in Nova Scotia, Jost and Myles will use the pollen to pollinate female hop plants grown by the company.  In the fall, they will collect the seeds and grow the offspring.  Over the next several years, each of the resulting offspring will be evaluated for mildew resistance and suitability for making beer.  Within a decade, they hope hop growers in the region will be growing their novel hop varieties and craft breweries will be brewing beer with them.

Jacqueline Cole, President of the Maritime Hop Growers Cooperative says: “Hop growers in the Maritimes have been searching for the varieties that work best in our climate.  Mildew resistance is definitely one of the most highly valued traits. New mildew resistant varieties bred right here in the Maritimes will be very attractive to growers.”

Jeremy White, owner of Big Spruce Brewing in Nyanza, Cape Breton, grows 11 different varieties of hops.  He says: “Finding hop varieties that work well in our climate is a natural step in the development of our local craft beer industry, and breeding new varieties is an innovative way of achieving this.  Finding unique varieties that excel in our climate will help us create products that truly reflect our unique terroir.”

“Terroir” is a word used most often in the wine world.  It is the characteristic taste and flavour imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced.  It is the complete natural environment in which a product is produced, including the soil, climate and topography.

Myles says: “Our humid climate makes growing hops challenging because of disease pressure from mildew. With these new mildew resistant hop varieties, we’ll have our own unique East Coast hops that require less chemical input to grow.”

Jost says: “The Nova Scotia craft beer industry is experiencing explosive growth.  Breeding our own unique hops will help us make beers that have a distinct local flavour, unavailable anywhere else in the world.”

The project is supported by an Engage grant from the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) awarded to Dr Myles.