Hop Farms Quality - Which vendor is best? (Roy Farms, YVH, YCH, etc...?)

[BugAC]

I get most of my hops from Yakima Valley hops, but have occasionally bought hops from Yakima Chief hops. After listening to a few podcasts on hop selection, i want to make sure i'm getting the best quality hops i can find regardless of where it is from. I see that Roy Farms sells hops for homebrew, and have never heard of them before. Is their a quality difference between any of these farms or are they all relatively the same?

 

[MaxStout]

Being an agricultural commodity, I think any variations in quality are more likely due to conditions like weather, pests, etc., than any process differences from one vendor to the next.

 

[mashpaddled]

For the most part, homebrewers are not actually buying direct from farms or to the extent you're buying direct, you may not even be buying their harvest. Most hop retailers available at our scale (and much of craft beer in general) comes from wholesalers like Yakima Valley who buy from many farms and aggregate harvests into a uniform product.

IMO it's way more important to buy from sellers who have good product and store them well. I tend to avoid the BSG packaged hops or LHBS packaged hops simply because I don't know where they came from or the quality.

I've long been a customer of Hops Direct and that's partially because I'm a sucker for their generous idea of a pound that usually runs closer to 1.25 pounds. I've liked the hops but I know there are people who have been less impressed by quality. Generally only hear good things about YKH and Yakima Chief. Haven't heard of Roy Farms. If you're happy with the two Yakima sellers, I wouldn't personally try to chase down finding better hops in search for the holy grail.

 

[day_trippr]

I like the YVH resealable metalized Mylar packaging much more than YCH's non-resealable who-knows-what packaging...

Cheers!