Ep72 — Christine Clair and Nolan Russell of Crosby Hops, Oregon, USA

Those of you with good enough memories will remember I have some thoughts on terroir in beer. Basically, I think the concept is a scam, and that a product which is so influenced by not just a confluence of ingredients, but so much human intervention can’t possibly express the t-word.

However, I remain open-minded, and I try to let those opinions remain somewhat malleable. While beer as a finished product might not be the best device to showcase the influence of climatic conditions on ingredients and flavour, when it comes to those ingredients individually I admit that differences can be demonstrated. 

Take, for example, Centennial, a public aroma hop variety that is known for expressing aromatics that range from freshly zested lemon rind to sun-warmed rose petals in full bloom. Centennial is a characterful hop that makes delicious beer, and if you don’t believe me just ask breweries like California’s Sierra Nevada, or Bell's Brewery in Michigan, who use this particular hop to stunning effect in beers such as Celebration and Two Hearted. In fact, the latter of those two beers is what we have to thank for the continued success and admiration for this particular hop variety. 

But what’s the difference between a Centennial hop if it's grown in the hot, arid climate of Yakima Valley in Washington compared to the cooler climate of Woodburn, Oregon? While located further south, with the city being just outside of Portland, it's also closer to the coast, which brings in that cooler, Pacific air. It means the hops experience completely different growing conditions, giving Oregon Centennial its own vibe compared to the harvest a few hundred miles north. 

Crosby Hops are the owners of that hop farm, and they are growing the Centennial that you find in Bell’s Two Hearted. But it’s also making its way over to the UK, and most recently it has been showcased in a new, nationally released IPA from the Leeds-based Northern Monk Brewery called Beyond. While it's still packed with that familiar pithy citrus, it also has something else—a brightness, a resonance if you will. It brings a distinctive character to the beer, and a lot of this is down to where it grows, and who grows it. 

In this episode of The Pellicle Podcast I’m lucky enough to sit down, in person, with Christine Clair and Nolan Russll of Crosby Hops, a generational family-owned hop farm in Oregon, USA. It was a great opportunity to chat about both the challenges faced by, and the opportunities available to modern-day hop farmers, and there’s a good mix of chat that veers from the scientific and technical, to the romantic. Hops are an ingredient that gets a lot of people fired up about beer, so if you love hops, then this is an episode for you. 

A special thank you to our sponsors at Brewers Select who made this episode possible by bringing Christine and Russell over to Beer X Liverpool, where this interview was recorded in March 2025. 

We’re able to produce The Pellicle Podcast directly thanks to our Patreon subscribers, and our sponsors Loughran Brewers Select. If you’re enjoying this podcast, or the weekly articles we publish, please consider taking out a monthly subscription for less than the price of a pint a month.