{"id":23696,"date":"2022-10-11T01:25:19","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T01:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saj.pachecostudios.com?p=23696"},"modified":"2022-10-11T01:25:21","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T01:25:21","slug":"alaska-airlines-pulls-off-ultimate-beer-run-in-multiple-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/national-news\/alaska-airlines-pulls-off-ultimate-beer-run-in-multiple-states\/%20","title":{"rendered":"Alaska Airlines Pulls Off Ultimate Beer Run in Multiple States"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This fall, Alaska Air Cargo delivered the industry’s first\nand biggest fresh hops run to breweries in Maui and Anchorage within 24 hours\nof harvest \u2013 this was a huge logistical hop-eration that brought a favorite\nseasonal beer beyond the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fresh hops at 49th State Brewing.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Made from fresh-plucked, undried hops that are typically rushed straight from the fields to the breweries, Alaska went further than any U.S. commercial airline has before by delivering more than 1,200 pounds of fresh hops to Maui Brewing Co.<\/a> in Hawaii and 49th State Brewing<\/a> in Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is a potential game-changer for the craft beer\nindustry and farm-to-glass collaboration at its finest,” says Adam\nDrouhard, cargo managing director for Alaska Airlines, noting that Washington\nstate grows almost three-quarters of the U.S. hop crop. “This puts a\nNorthwest agricultural product in places that don’t normally get it. With the\nsize and scope, we have in Seattle, we are really positioned to own this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all started with a deep appreciation of fresh hops beer\nand connecting the dots that Alaska Airlines could be the key to sharing it\nwith the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jake Spotts, postal affairs manager on Alaska’s cargo team,\nhas tried beers all over the world during his 20-year Air Force career \u2013 but\nsays there’s nothing better than the taste of fresh hops during harvest. Packed\nwith unique floral flavor, fresh hop beers are usually made during the\nlate-summer harvest by breweries located near farms in Washington, Oregon and\nother places in the Northwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spotts thought that because of our decades of expertise\nshipping perishable products like fresh Alaska salmon, we could find a way to\nship fresh hops to breweries outside the Northwest.  Something that hadn’t been done by a U.S.\nairline on a commercial scale \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How we made fresh hops fly.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bale Breakers Brewing Company at Alaska\u2019s North Satellite Lounge in Sea-Tac.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Craft brewers thrive on collaboration, and when the opportunity came to ship a large volume of fresh hops out of state, Yakima-based Bale Breaker Brewing Company<\/a> helped us get the idea off the vine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brewers at Bale Breaker, Maui Brewing Co. and 49th State\nworked together on beer recipes to highlight the hops’ fresh flavor and\ncoordinated logistics with the Alaska Air Cargo team and Yakima Chief Hops, a\ngrower-owned organization that distributes hops for more than 50 farms across\nthe Northwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Scalability of shipping fresh hops has really been the\nchallenge to overcome because you only have about 24 hours from harvest before\nthe hops start to degrade,” said Bryan Pierce, Chief Sales and Marketing\nOfficer for Yakima Chief Hops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To keep the hops fresh throughout their journey, the harvest\nwas timed perfectly so that the just-picked hops could be bagged onsite at\nLoftus Ranches, one of Yakima’s longest running family-owned hop farms and the\nsite of Bale Breaker Brewing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, they were loaded into refrigerated trucks and\ndriven to the Alaska Air Cargo offices at Sea-Tac International Airport just in\ntime to load onto the aircraft. More than 1,200 pounds of hops were shipped\nnonstop to the brewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Maui and in Anchorage, the brewers were ready to add the\nfresh hops to the “boil” \u2013 the first stage in beer \u2013 as soon as they\narrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When we added the fresh hops, it smelled\namazing!” said Kim Brisson-Lutz, Maui Brewing Co.’s Vice President of\nOperations. “Making beer is a culinary art, and we’re all about making\nthese ingredients really shine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Using Alaska Air Cargo, we can guarantee the supply\nchain all the way from field to the kettle,” said David McCarthy,\nco-founder of 49th State Brewing. “Aficionados of beer are really looking\nfor this flavor, and we’re excited we can now make the freshest beer in\nAnchorage and the whole Alaska market.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This fall, Alaska Air Cargo delivered the industry’s first and biggest fresh hops run to breweries in Maui and Anchorage within 24 hours of harvest \u2013 this was a huge logistical hop-eration that brought a favorite seasonal beer beyond the Pacific Northwest. Made from fresh-plucked, undried hops that are typically rushed straight from the fields […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Alaska-2209_FreshHops_2417-edit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23700,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23696\/revisions\/23700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}