Hops

No hops grown for brewing exist in Baja California. Brewers source them from afar, mainly from the US, where the hop fields of the West Coast lie just a few hundred kilometers away. That's why the craft scene here is so strongly shaped by American taste.

Typical varieties include Cascade, Centennial, and Citra. They carry notes of grapefruit, citrus, and tropical fruit and are considered the signature of the American West Coast. A West Coast IPA from Tijuana or Ensenada often tastes remarkably similar to one from San Diego, just a few kilometers to the north.

Hops deliver two things: bitterness and aroma. Bitterness comes from alpha acids that dissolve during the boiling of the wort, the sugary liquid that precedes fermentation. Aroma lives in essential oils that evaporate quickly, even with a short boil. That's why brewers add some hops late in the boil or even after fermentation, a technique known as dry hopping.

With Mexican lager, hops stay firmly in the background. The standard for this style sits at 18 to 25 International Bitterness Units (IBU), well below what an IPA demands. Here, hops exist only to balance the malt's sweetness and give the beer a clean finish. Some large breweries use hop extract, a concentrated form of hop resins that allows for precise dosing. Craft brewers tend to prefer whole cones or pressed pellets, which are dried, ground hop cones compressed into pellet form.