Outbreaks of powdery mildew in the early 20th century meant it became somewhat infeasible to grow most aromatic and flavoursome hops, leading to research and breeding programmes to produce disease resistant hops with other desired characteristics
Most of the mildew-resistant hops were wild and from the US and Canada
Hop breeding and research started in the UK but ended in the 2000s
Oregon State University has been breeding hops for almost 100 years
The USDA also has their hop research center in Oregon
The US is responsible for 40% of hop production, of which over 98% is in Oregon, Washington and Idaho
Cascade hops, from the USDA research center in Oregon, started the craft beer movement due to the combination of high flavour and disease tolerance
German hop research started in 1926, but only had any real success after the 1980s

So essentially, the US has just got very lucky when it comes to hop production with good soils and disease resistance, while German beermaking was set back leading other styles to become and remain popular, such as very lightly hopped wheat beers, sour beers where the acidity comes from the fermentation instead of hops, and more recently Belgian style beers that are stronger abv so the stronger alcohol taste substitutes for some of the strength of the hops

There probably are also studies, but they tend to look into mechanisms/variations whereas this is more of a series of coinciding factors which don't really need much research to make sense

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you for the explanation, I didn't know about a lot of that! But the jump from all of that information to "beer with hop outside US/NZ is only average" is too large and too subjective.

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I get it's a big jump, but I've been clear I'm restricting it to the most popular types of beer and explained why US bred and grown hops had the good fortune to be the most aromatic disease resistant hops, so I still don't think it's unreasonable

Again, none of this applies for styles beyond 3-7% golden beer fermented with yeast only, and even then there's a few exceptions for certain styles where the aromatics are different (eg bitter, which is less about the aromatic hops and more about the earthy notes of the bittering hops), but for the most popular lagers and pale ales I think it holds

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

The issue is that just based on the history you've mentioned I can't say much about the status today. What developments have happened over the last two decades with more advanced methods? How much of the research is shared between countries, how much of the plants etc?

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Hops are highly sensitive to the soil acidity and minerals in terms of the compounds the plants produce, so sharing plants is largely infeasible, plus because it's the US many of them are trademarked so there's no sharing for that reason

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Surely fertilizer and other additions can be used to adjust this, or genetic editing can be used to incorporate some stuff?

Okay, but almost everything is trademarked, doesn't mean it can't be bought/sold?

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 14 hours ago

That's a lot of expense compared to just importing US-grown hops, as there's a lot of soil to adjust

And yeah, trademarks on plants are no joke, there's a bunch of restrictions on buying/selling them etc.