Selected Hops on the Way (finally!)

Do you know the hops we selected in the last harvest in the United States? They finally left and are on their way to Brazil right now!

The challenge of bringing our hand-picked imports was not small, amid the pandemic in which we live. If it were a normal year, we would have had hops available for months. However, this year doesn't have much, right?

It was all right for the hops to arrive in the first week of March, by air freight, but with the outbreak of the covid-19 in the USA in that period, everything changed. Freight, which would come by plane, was canceled countless times, the US states were gradually quarantined and consequently the country's logistical structure was paralyzed. At that moment it was very clear that bringing our cargo would not be an easy task ...

We also went into isolation in Brazil and for a while, there was nothing to be done about imports. We store our hops in a cold room on a partner farm in the state of Idaho. There was nothing to be done, it was time to protect ourselves and think about our health. Since then we have been working for home office and so we continue.

Our country has not yet gone through the worst of the pandemic, but there, little by little, the situation was normalizing and our logistics partners started to return to their operations. Ufa! Time to bring our hops by plane so that they arrive quickly (#sqn). As you may know, aviation is probably the sector most affected by the new coronavirus. Flights were drastically reduced and the original prices simply multiplied by 10.15.20x .... outside the dollar's rise (people, 2020 is not for the weak). 

It was then that we organized to carry out an import by sea container for the first time. Caring for hops is always our priority, so it is clear that our container would be refrigerated, ensuring the ideal temperature and freshness from end to end. We learned (a lot) about the process, we gathered documents and more documents and, after some canceled ships, we found a persistent vessel, and our cargo, the one we tried so much for shipping, left in a refrigerated container in Seattle, Washington state, on 14/06 :). We are monitoring the cargo daily and the landing at the port of Rio Grande is scheduled for 7/31. You can be sure that we won't take your eye off for a day;)

Now, it is not long before hops selected by us directly on the farms are available for our partner breweries. In addition to classic varieties known by brewers, we have hops arriving for the first time in Brazil ... but that is a topic for the next post;)