A crisp, lemon-like aroma filled a large storage refrigerator at Worthy Brewing Co.’s east Bend production facility when brewmaster Chad Kennedy opened a foil bag of Meridian hops and started running his fingers through their light green cones.

“Hops aren’t a big beer ingredient in terms of their weight,” said Kennedy, who compared the types of hops he uses to make Worthy Brewing’s signature beers to the types of herbs and spices chefs use when preparing their food. “But in terms of their flavor they can have a pretty big impact.”

On Friday, Worthy Brewing took a huge leap forward in its relationship with hops — one of the four key ingredients used to make beer — when it dedicated its new quarter-acre hops yard adjacent to its brewery. There, Oregon State University researchers will grow the next generation of hops.

Though it won’t be ready to be put in craft beers for several years, researchers say these new hop varieties could be tailored to excel in Central Oregon’s climate and could fill a much-needed gap in the state’s craft brewing industry – organic hops.

“My niche is to develop aroma hops that are suitable for Oregon growers,” said Sean Townsend, who works with OSU’s aroma hops breeding program in Corvallis and will supervise the research done at Worthy’s hops yard. “And I’d very much like to lower the environmental footprint in agriculture.”

In the field

Featured in Worthy Brewing’s Worthy India Pale Ale, East Side Pale Ale and Imperial India Pale Ale, Meridian hops are one of about 15 varieties Kennedy uses to give his beers a fresh and slightly bitter taste.

Indie Hops founder Jim Solberg said Meridian, the most recent variety to hit Oregon’s craft beer scene, is the result of a failed attempt to regrow another style of hops, Columbia, which someone planted on a hillside for an experimental trial and then abandoned.

“What we ended up with was an unknown hop that had taken over those hills,” said Solberg, whose company sells hops to Worthy Brewing and several other well-known breweries, including New Belgium, Bend Brewing Co. and Stone Brewing.

But while Meridian has taken the craft brewing industry by storm since its discovery two years ago, Solberg said the way his company came across Meridian is the exact opposite of how it normally finds a new type of hops. The process usually involves a considerable amount of work, time and financial risk, he said.

Solberg said the process starts when growers crossbreed two different styles of hops, collect seeds from the resulting plant and germinate them in a greenhouse. If these plants germinate successfully, they spend three years undergoing tests at an experimental hop yard like the one being built at Worthy Brewing, then another three years in farm trials — where the crop is grown under the same conditions it would face in a commercial field.

Solberg said the time allotted to these field trials is necessary because hops varieties are susceptible to weather changes, two types of mildew, pests and any number of other problems that can wipe out the entire crop.

In the brewery

But even if a variety of hops can make it past all of these potential threats, he said, it doesn’t mean it will taste good when it’s added to beer.

Though brewmasters often harvest hops during this trial period and use them in small batches of beer, it isn’t until a strain’s sixth year of development that a developer has enough product to conduct a pilot trial at a commercial brewery. That’s when the brewer learns whether the strain can be used in a commercial environment and whether it’s been worth the investment.

“It’s possible to get (to the pilot brewery trial) and then realize, ‘Well, it’s not that special,’ ” Solberg said. “We could get that far and say, ‘Ehhh … this just isn’t going to work.’ ”

The development process is especially risky because hops have no alternative use, Kennedy said. If a barley crop fails, it can be used to make animal feed. But if a hops crop fails, it fails, he said.

Once a hops variety has made it through all the tests, it takes an additional two years before its developers have a large enough sample to fully release it to the commercial market.

In the yard

By hosting an experimental hop yard and greenhouse, Worthy Brewing workers will be able to watch the first two stages of the hops development process take place by walking out into the brewery’s parking lot – much in the same way a winemaker can walk out into his field and look at his grapes.

“It’s going to help put the big picture together for us,” Kennedy said, explaining that brewmasters are usually disconnected from the agricultural process because they use so much hops and barley with each batch that it’s extremely difficult to grow it themselves.

“It’s going to be neat to crossbreed two different crops and see what happens,” he said.

The new hops yard will give a team of students and volunteers from OSU-Cascades’ campus a chance to learn the ins and outs of the hops development process as they tend and test the hops varieties that are growing there.

It will also give craft beer drinkers a chance to learn about Alfred Haunold — the namesake of Worthy Brewing’s hops yard — and the work he did developing 16 varieties of hops while working for OSU’s hops breeding program.

“The work he did had a huge impact on the global hops and beer industry,” Townsend said, adding Haunold’s portfolio incudes the Cascade, Willamette, Sterling, Liberty, Mt. Hood and Santiam varieties that give Oregon’s craft beers their signature taste. “His contribution was huge.”

Townsend said he plans to hang a few of Haunold’s most popular hops varieties along the wires that run across Worthy’s experimental hops yard to see how they’d perform in Central Oregon’s climate, which is considerably drier than the Willamette Valley, where most of the state’s hops are grown.

Townsend said he also wants to grow a few of his own hops varieties in the hops yard. These experimental hops varieties, which haven’t been named yet, are being developed so they have a strong aroma and a strong resistance to diseases and pests.

Brewmasters are always looking for new ways they can flavor their products and come out with new types and styles of beer, he said. And disease and pest resistance would let farmers grow experimental hops varieties with little or no chemical pesticides, something that would reduce their environmental footprint and could lead to them being grown organically.

Kennedy said developing a variety of hops that could be grown organically would have a huge impact on the craft beer industry.

That’s because on Jan. 1. the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board officially removed hops from its list of ingredients that could be grown using non-organic methods but still included in products that were labelled as being organic.

Kennedy said the decision, which was announced about two years ago, could have a huge impact on the craft beer industry. Growing hops on a commercial scale requires a lot of pesticides and fertilizers because of their vulnerability to pests and disease.

“There’s some places that are totally based on growing organic beer,” Kennedy said, adding these businesses must now find an organically grown hops variety if they want to continue labelling their product as such.

Only time will tell whether the experimental varieties of hops planted in Worthy’s hops yard on Friday can fill this niche and meet the emerging demand for an all-organic beer.

A considerable amount of time.