The craft brewery boom buoys nation’s only Latino-owned hop farm

But as they’ve done for the past five years, Loza Farms took a breather one evening last month to open their farm to brewery owners and brewmasters from around the U.S. and Mexico for their annual Mexican Night.  

What started as a gathering for a handful of Mexican craft brewers is now a full-scale must-attend harvest event for hop and brewery officials.  It’s also become a showcase for the only Latino-owned hop farm in the United States.    

Around 100 guests enjoyed carnitas, slow-cooked over an outdoor gas stove; a variety of toppings; and of course beer from breweries that use Loza Farms hops. Mexican music filled the open air as brewers and hop growers talked shop and took a tour led by the oldest of the four Loza children, Leon Loza Jr., 41, who most people know simply as “Junior.”   

Among those in attendance were Simon Brown and Jeromé Dixon of Claremont Craft Ales, a craft brewery in Claremont, Calif., outside of Los Angeles.  

Brown and Dixon’s visit to Loza Farms was well-timed. During their visit to the Yakima Valley, they had decided to secure a contract to purchase Centennial varietal hops.  

“I get more value making the connection with growers and farmers,” Brown said.  

The pair selected the Loza Farm hops after a blind taste test — a practice many breweries use when selecting hops for long-term purchasing contracts — so the hop quality drives their decision. Still, Brown said, learning of the brewery’s Mexican heritage provided additional value.  

“As owners, we love to tell that story,” Brown said. “Our customer base values local, family and history.” 

Loza Farms grew up with the U.S. craft brewing industry. Leon Loza Sr. realized his luck when he purchased the 56-acre hop farm in 2006, just a few years before the industry boom started. A year after buying the farm, Loza Sr. planted 20 new acres, a bit of a risk at the time considering it wasn’t guaranteed he could secure a contract for the additional acreage. Loza’s other farming operations, namely raising cattle, supported the operation during the first few years.  

According to the Brewers Association, the number of U.S. breweries increased nearly tenfold from 1,460 in 2006 to 9,906 in 2023. Loza Farms has also blossomed, from 56 hop acres in 2006 to 365 today.  

“It happened to be a home run,” Leon Loza Sr. said.  

Now, as his children take on more of the business operation, they feel a sense of responsibility to help these breweries — especially those owned and operated by people of color or in his father’s native Mexico — thrive.  

They also know their success is crucial to ensuring the hop farm's continued success for multiple generations, said Leon Jr., the farm manager.  

“Without having visibility, it’s easy to disappear, right?” Junior said. “We’re trying to stay as relevant as possible so that people know that we’re still around, and we’re still an option as a hop farm, you know?”  

Indeed, many breweries play their part in making the Loza Farms name and brand visible, explicitly mentioning Loza Farms when describing how their collaborations are made or incorporating images or logos from the farm on their beer cans.   

Junior is the face of the farm through his active involvement in brewing industry meetings and collaborations. 

However, while most brewery owners and operators may be most acquainted with Leon Loza Sr. and Jr., the younger Leon notes that the farm’s success would not have happened without everyone doing their part. For example, Michael, Jr.’s brother, oversees the drying of hops and works around the clock to ensure all aspects of the hop harvest are going as planned. Sisters Veronica and Claudia help run the office and monitor the farm operation. 

“Even though people see my face more, when [they see] bales [of hops] and are like, ‘Oh, these are perfect,’ that’s not me. That’s them,” Jr. said. “We might fight, we might argue, but without them, you know, we’re nothing. It’s a family business for sure.” 

An outlier in a multigeneration industry

The U.S. hop industry is based primarily in the Pacific Northwest, with Yakima Valley growers producing roughly 75% of the U.S. crop in any given year.

The Loza family is an outlier among hop-growing families in the region. Two decades in the business is relatively short compared to the multiple generations who have run most Yakima Valley hop farms. Several local growers hailed from Quebec and arrived in the valley at the turn of the 20th century.

Leon Loza Sr. started working for one of those French-Canadian hop families in 1977, shortly after arriving from Mexico. He worked with Stanley Brulotte for over 25 years through good times and bad.

One of those good moments for Loza and wife Mimi came in 1986, when immigration reform passed and signed by President Ronald Reagan removed the fear of being deported for their former undocumented status, the couple recalled in a 2018 Yakima Magazine article displayed prominently in the farm’s office area. The couple became citizens in 1995.

In 2004, Stanley Brulotte passed away and his widow followed several months later. His stepchildren wanted to sell the farm, then called Stanley Brulotte Farms. After talking to other hop growers, Loza Sr. decided to buy the farm two years later.

Quality matters 

The Loza family works with several sales and distribution companies in the Yakima Valley to sell their crop each year. These companies connect Loza Farms to craft brewers around the continent. The hops also are in beers from macrobreweries: One longtime customer is Anheuser-Busch InBev, the large multinational beer company.  

During each fall harvest, brewery representatives are in town firming up hop contracts for future years. 

For many breweries, their first introduction to any hop farm is often through a blind taste test. Some breweries do pick a farm by name, but others use a blind test to ensure that quality — not just name recognition — is the top factor for selection.  

“They don’t want to be swayed one way or another,” said Victoria Garza of Yakima Chief Hops, or YCH, who spent 11 years selling hops in the Latin American market.  

For Dixon, the Claremont Craft Ales production manager, Loza Farms' Centennial variety had the perfect “lemon-forward” aroma and scent he wanted for one of the brewery’s flagship beers.  

Loza Farms’ quality is recognized by the merchants who sell them. On the walls of the farm office, alongside family photos on the farm, are awards from Yakima Chief Hops and other merchants for producing high-quality hops.  

While Junior believes the farm’s Mexican heritage is important, he says that ultimately it’s the quality of their product that attracts brewers and that has been crucial for the farm’s success, from the first 20 acres his father planted to nearly 300 more over nearly two decades.  

“I don’t want you to buy my hops because I’m a Mexican hop farmer,” Junior said. “I want you to buy my hops because I’m a hop farmer who does a good job.”  

Still, the farm’s Mexican heritage can be and has been a significant draw, especially for Spanish-speaking breweries abroad.  

Garza remembers visiting Mexican breweries with Leon Loza Sr. for the first time many years ago and being amazed that Loza Sr. could explain the ins and outs of the hop business in their native language. She considers brokering those early interactions one of the highlights of her career in the hop industry.  

“Up to that point, I never had a grower that was able to engage in that capacity,” she said.  

After Garza moved on to a different position with Yakima Chief Hops, Rodrigo Plancarte, who is based near Mexico City, was assigned the job overseeing the market in Latin America. Plancarte was involved in planning the first Mexican Night back in 2019.  

Plancarte said Mexico’s craft brewery scene is currently similar to what the U.S. market was in the early 2000s. Roughly 1% of beer consumption in the country comes from craft breweries, so there’s plenty of room for growth, he said.  

Many Mexican craft breweries are in Tijuana and Mexicali, in the state of Baja California, a short car ride from San Diego, a significant craft brewery hub. However, more breweries are popping up around Mexico City, where Plancarte lives.  

These new breweries make beers that cater to Mexican palates and tastes, including porters that integrate coffee and chocolate aromas and flavors, Plancarte said.  

Another unique quality of Mexican breweries is their heavy use of Instagram over other social media platforms to advertise or document their processes. Loza Farms mirrors that trend with its active Instagram presence. There, Junior and other family members document everything from recent collaborations with breweries in the U.S. and Mexico to meeting fellow hop growers and breweries during conferences and the hop harvest.

Loza family members are rarely alone in photos posted on the account, which speaks to their commitment to meet brewers whenever possible.  

Junior said he met his first brewer in 2007, shortly after his father purchased the farm, and he’s made sure to meet with them as much as possible since then. Even if he works through a broker or distributor, he makes a point of building relationships with breweries. He has established such a rapport with some brewers that they’ll prioritize coming to the farm every year and text or message when they can’t.  

“Without our networking, I don’t think we’d be as we’d be as successful as we are now,” Junior said.  

Many have noticed his efforts. “You go to [the Craft Brewers Conference], the guy’s talking to everybody,” said Garza of Yakima Chief Hops. “That’s who he is. He wants to know what he can do better on the farm and how the quality can improve.”  

During one conference in 2022, Junior realized he had an opportunity to leverage his family farm’s higher profile as the only Latino/Chicano-owned hop farm by working with more U.S. breweries owned by people of color.  

It’s a natural next step for a farm that has grown alongside craft brewers for 20 years.  

“I’m proud of what my parents did and what we have, and we continue to have a spotlight because of my parents’ story,” he said. “The concept is that we can showcase other people who are also doing cool stuff.”  

The farm has collaborated with several minority-owned breweries in the U.S., including Seattle’s Black-owned Metier Brewing Company and Mujeres Brew House, a Latina-owned brewery in San Diego.  

With the collaboration with Mujeres Brew House, Junior opted to have his sisters take the lead to ensure women were involved throughout the process.  

The next generation  

The third generation of Loza farms is also getting involved. The youngest ones were present for the family’s Mexican night event. The oldest, teens, help with the harvest. Early in the season, nearly all the grandchildren helped plant hops in small pots to start the production process.  

Leon Loza Sr. said he has mixed feelings. Running a hop farm is complex, and he said he would love his grandchildren to look at other fields that aren’t as taxing or resource-intensive; at the same time, he wants to make sure they know what to do if they decide to work on the farm. 

“My dad used to tell us when we were growing up that the only thing he was going to leave us was the knowledge of how to work because he didn’t have anything,” Junior said. “So the idea is to pass that along the knowledge on how to work, and if they come back to the farm, they’ll already be ahead because they know how to do a lot of the work. That would be the best part, for my dad to see his grandkids running the farm one day.”