Siren Time Hops 2025 — Part Two: Glorious Galaxy
Hops arrived in Australia not long after the first colonisers arrived from Britain. Through the late 18th, and early 19th century, seedlings from the UK and Germany migrated across the world to the “new” continent’s shores, where the struggle of self-determination was stirring a thirst among the growing population.
From the early 19th century onwards Australian growers attempted to produce varieties from the UK including Whitebine, Fuggles, and East Kent Goldings. These were cultivated until the 1950s, when Australia founded its first breeding program. By the late 1980s, it had a significant amount of unique genetic material to play with; hops growing in Australia had, by that point, been adapted to local soil and climate, and were so genetically removed from their European ancestors, as to be a uniquely Australian product.
Initially, the defining characteristic of Australian-bred hops was a high alpha acid content, which made them effective bittering hops. Further development of bittering capabilities became the focus of Hop Products Australia (HPA), the regional representative of the global BarthHaas group, when it took over custodianship of the program in 1988. Pride of Ringwood (commercially released in 1965) and Topaz (1997) are great examples of what a successful release looked like for HPA at that time. Both of these varieties, while technically dual-purpose, were once the highest alpha acid hops in the world.
In the process of developing new bittering varieties, HPA unintentionally produced a handful of aroma hops. Their plan had never been to release them commercially, but between 2006 and 2007 a short alpha market incentivised HPA to trial any and all experimental varieties that might prove financially viable. Emboldened by the recent release and stratospheric success of Simcoe in the USA and Nelson Sauvin in New Zealand, HPA took a chance on some of its own aroma varieties.
“We released quite a few hops before the commercialisation of Galaxy in 2009, but at that point it became very apparent what success looked like,” Owen Johnston, CEO at HPA, tells me. “Galaxy simply took off, and we spent the next 14 years trying to meet demand.”
Galaxy changed everything about the Australian hop growing industry. HPA completely reorientated the breeding programme, making “impact in beer” a key criteria for selections. By this, Owen means distinct, strong, likeable flavours, so that, “if you give people a dozen beers in a blind tasting, they say ‘that’s my favourite’.” That’s what Galaxy was, and is—it sent the global beer market into a frenzy. Brewers from around the world were tripping over themselves to place orders for a hop that so viscerally conjured ripe passion fruit and peach.
““Galaxy simply took off, and we spent the next 14 years trying to meet demand.” ”
Owen explains how there was certainly a scramble to propagate material, and deploy it in the fields when it came to meeting this new demand. But also there can be a lag of anywhere between 12 and 24 months between propagation and a plant’s first fruitful harvest. The nature of hop cultivation means it cannot be rushed.
“For many years, we were slowing down demand and telling people bad news. You know, ‘we can’t keep up with your Galaxy demand’,” Owen says. “People were quite emotional about it in a lot of ways. In response to that we made significant investments in the business. We probably spent more than 100 million Australian dollars over ten years, modernising the farms, expanding acreage, [and] building new picking facilities. Galaxy changed our business. In 2006 we were 100% alpha hops and by 2021 we’d moved to 100% aroma hops.”
Galaxy’s first crop was less than ten metric tonnes, and at its peak, hit 100 times that. But such success is not what makes Galaxy interesting. In fact, the story so far is merely a precursor to what makes this hop so relevant today.
“I went on a work trip to the American East Coast in 2022 and as soon as I introduced myself to anybody as an Australian in the beer industry, the first question they’d ask is ‘what's wrong with Galaxy?’” says Pat Thiering, Brand and Innovation Manager at Mountain Culture Beer Co. “They’d immediately follow that up with, ‘Do you guys get to select?’”
As a champion of Galaxy, Mountain Culture could immediately tell when something about the character of the hop changed. The brewery, based in Katoomba, at the edge of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney, opened in 2019. Its plan had been to brew a strong core range, and cater to the steady stream of tourists that come to take in the extraordinary natural beauty of the neighbouring National Park. That didn’t quite go to plan. Bush fires, followed by Covid-19 meant the brewery had to pivot towards online sales. Mountain Culture also started a limited run programme to drum up enthusiasm among drinkers.
Illustrations by Dionne Kitching
“Brewing a new beer every week, we needed new ingredients all the time, which led us to Galaxy,” says head brewer Jake Nicholas, (or Jumbo, as he prefers.)
“Our thinking was; let's show the Australian beer community—which was really up and coming at that time, much less established than the American one—what this local hop can do. We used it in one of our first limited series beers, called Light Speed, an oat cream IPA brewed with Galaxy, and it sold out almost immediately.”
Galaxy was a big part of Mountain Culture’s early success. But due to its burgeoning popularity globally it wasn’t alone when it started noticing unexpected astringency in its Galaxy-forward beers. If you look online, you’ll find other reports of hop burn, grassiness, pencil shavings, diesel, and a catty smell.
“All that said, it also, in some ways, led us to being a bit more creative with how we were going to use the Galaxy we still had,” Jumbo tells me. The team took note of some dry hopping innovations happening in the US, and from that started to think about the relationship between temperature, contact time and flavour.
“With a lot of the Australian hops, but especially with Galaxy, we’ve found unique flavours at different times,” he says. “[At] six hours [in tank] there’s more tropical without the passion fruit. At 12 hours, you're kind of coming into your passion fruit, and then you might get to 24 to 48 and you start to really pull that astringency that we wanted to avoid.”
““With a lot of the Australian hops, but especially with Galaxy, we’ve found unique flavours at different times.””
While Mountain Culture had discovered a workable solution to conjuring that bright passionfruit that made them fall in love with Galaxy, that didn’t explain what had caused it to change in the first place.
Owen is transparent when admitting that in 2018 the Galaxy harvest didn’t hit the mark. On the back of that, HPA reviewed every step in the growing, picking, processing, storage and transport processes, in search of areas to improve on, and invested a further A$35 million in a new pelleting plant, a sensory screening process for raw hops coming off the farms, upgrading primary packaging materials, and improvements to material flow during the ideal harvest window.
A unique feature of buying Australian hops, including Galaxy, is that brewers don’t get the opportunity to select specific lots, like they would with, for example, Citra. If a brewery is ordering enough of, say, Citra, the supplier will give them three or more samples which correlate with early, mid, or late stage picked hops. Each of which have quite significantly different characteristics within the range of what we associate with this variety.
Samples are typically assessed blind, requiring the brewer to use sensory analysis and select on the basis of preferred characteristics. This might result in Siren’s IPAs being different from, say, Northern Monk’s—and allows hop traders in Yakima to collect data on market trends, which in turn informs the breeding programme. When it comes to harvesting Galaxy, however, early, mid and late stage hops are mixed and processed together.
“We have a completely different philosophy on delivering quality to our brewers around the world,” Owen says. “We don’t offer selections to anybody. No one gets to come in and cherry pick the very best Galaxy. Brewers of any size, all around the world should have absolute confidence that HPA has made decisions to deliver the highest possible quality with the lowest possible flavour variance. To allow people to come in and slice out bits of the Galaxy crop that they like, actually reduces those outcomes for the majority of brewers.”
What’s undeniable about this story is that the brewing world is willing to go to great lengths, make exceptions, and change the way it works for Galaxy. The hop, by all accounts, has been restored to its former glory, brewers’ trust in it is steadily rebuilding, and yet the brewing world has been forever changed by it. Galaxy forced us to consider how long we are willing to wait, and what concessions we are willing to make for flavour.
“I think if the whole hop world started homogenising, it would be a massively negative thing,” says Siren head brewer, Sean Knight. “But if HPA does it to make Galaxy a hop that we can use and get the benefit from, I think it's a good thing.”
It’s all water under the bridge for Galaxy.
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Siren’s incredible Time Hops series of beers is out now and can be purchased on their webshop here, and from independent retailers across the UK. Fancy 10% off your order too? Get subscribing to our Patreon and earn yourself a discount code.
