TIETON, Wash.- With containment lines secured between the Retreat Fire and the towns of Tieton and Cowiche, residents and local businesses are looking to the future and recovering from the fire.
For Chris Mylroie, the owner of Shorthead Brewing, that means what the future of hops looks like in the Yakima Valley. With fire season, comes heavy smoke that can impact hop fields and the finished product.
“The smoke carries through,” says Mylroie. “Some breweries have done some beers with it, but as a brewer you’re looking at your flagships. You’re already trying to emulate the same beer your customers identify with.”
When the Retreat Fire hit, Mylroie looked to protect his brewery and protect his neighbors. He says if they were put into Level 3 (GO NOW) evacuations, he knew where to get some water trucks and how they could help fire crews.
Evacuations never went past Level 2 (GET SET), and he was left to watch after his brews. His concern then went to what would happen if the power was shut off.
“There’s potential to dump like $5,000 worth of beer sales, $10,000 to the beer sales,” says Shorthead’s owner. “It was kind of a couple of days of kind of watching and seeing where it was going, how close it was getting to Tieton.”
When the news of the fire first hit, Mylroie had several brews still fermenting, that needed to be kept at the same temperature. If power went out, even temporarily, the brewery would have had to toss the entire batch.
Now, breweries like Shorthead are looking to see what happens for next year’s crops, and how the smoke will affect those hops.
“Some brewers will use smoke tainted hops, but it’s a very niche thing,” says the owner. “The smoked hops I’ve had beers from, it doesn’t carry through like a smoked malt or if you’re going for a smoked beer.”
For a region like Yakima, that produces so much of the country’s hops, smoke could impact the hop fields enough to scrap the entire year of growth.
“A lot of hop growers write it off as a loss,” says Mylroie. “That’s a huge market that could be affected by just a fire.”
The owner adds that most of the smoke from the Retreat fire avoided Tieton because of the wind. But it did blow over Cowiche and as far as Moxee, possibly affecting those crops as well.
Until he knows what happens with next year’s crops, Mylroie is thankful for the fire crews still battling the Retreat Fire and wants them to stop in so he can say thank you in person.
