When Worthy opened it’s doors in 2013, we made a promise: we will bring new and exciting hop flavors to the pint glass. We won’t bring sand to the beach, we said.
The confidence in our mission was emboldened by our owner’s investment in the Aroma Hop Breeding Program at Oregon State University. Earlier, in 2009, Roger Worthington and Jim Solberg launched Indie Hops, which in turn created and funded the pioneering program in Corvallis.
It turns out breeding hops takes time -- especially if you want those hops to have high disease resistance, reliable agronomics, robust yields, and unique and tasty flavors.
It’s been a slow ride, but we’re getting there. Over the past few years, we’ve been fortunate enough to pilot brew with experimental hops that have emerged from the breeding program. Some have passed the taste test and moved up the ladder for more testing, only to be scrapped later because the yields were irreparably low, or they were prone to unmitigable disease.
Without a doubt, hop breeding and selection favors the strong and the tasty. It’s all or nothing. A winning commercially viable new hop has to score an A across the board. At the same time, a lot of great aroma hops which did not make the agronomic cut were still taste worthy.
We want to bring the best tasting x-hops to you, whether they make the final cut or not. Our delivery system? Worthy Hop Star IPA. The star of the show, after all, is the hop, whether a stand-alone wonder, like Strata, or a blend of good-to-great hops that together build a gold medal beer.
Several times a year we will be dry hopping an amped-up version of our flagship Worthy IPA with x-hops from the OSU-Indie Hops program, or other breeding programs from around the world. We will also be sourcing promising new and hard to get "Unobtanium" aroma hops from around the world.
Hop Star will show variations from batch to batch, but overall the brilliant hop flavors will shine through. We will rely on a number of workhorse hops to provide a citrusy flavor and aroma baseline.
To identify the x-hop as well as the baseline hops, we will provide a link on the can or bottle to our website, which we will update with each new batch. We will gladly accept your feedback.
We plan to package Worthy Hop Star IPA in cans in mid 2018. Draft versions will be available in early 2018.
Hop Star will not bring sand to the beach. Each pint will contain a fresh new flavor, in addition to a whole lot of patience and testing. With a little luck, it may also launch a new star in the constellation of worthy beers.
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