ST. PAUL, Oregon — The first hint of harvest time in one of the nation's major hop-growing regions is obvious: All along the backroads of Oregon's Willamette Valley are trucks overflowing with ropes of bouncy, freshly cut hops dropping their distinctive bright green cones on blacktop warmed by the early September sun.
Then there's the fragrance.
Fresh hops smell sweet like ripe berries, citrusy like an orange peel, and earthy like newly cut grass. It's a crisp, refreshing scent, but not yet boozy like beer. The aroma intensifies as the trucks approach the processing facilities. There, the resinous cones are stripped by machines from the bines they grew on all summer, dried in kilns and then shipped to breweries or brokers.
