Gail Nickerson Oral History Interview, August 6, 2014

GAIL NICKERSON: My name is Gail Nickerson and it's August 4, 2014. So?

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: So, now we interrupted you by [inaudible], sorry.

PETER KOPP: Let's start at the beginning.

GN: Okay.

PK: When we do the oral history we try to get a really full sense of your life and how got here and then how, not just the hop stuff, but everything. So, tell us where you were born, what your parents did?

GN: I was born in Portland, Oregon, at the same hospital my father died in, but that's another story. My parents, I was an only child. My mother worked off and on. My father worked for Western Electric, which was a subsidiary of AT&T, a manufacturing-this all disappeared with all the conglomerations. He a had a very, very steady job. He looked for a house in 1940 and my mother couldn't 00:01:00understand why he always went to this one place, which was the Laurelhurst District in Portland. Turns out, he knew they were going to build a plant there. My father walked to work every day for 40 some years, which I always thought was very odd. Anyway, and then my mother, I mean some people's fathers commute and this, well he had this big, long commute. My mother had graduated from high school in 1931 and jobs were not open then. She had a job. The idea of going to college wasn't in her sights. Finally, eventually, my mother graduated from Portland State in 1970. I went to her graduation. She had been working for the Public Health Department in Portland and ended up with a social work degree. I 00:02:00went to Ulysses Grant High School and my high school counselor, since I liked science, said that if you like science, well then your opportunities are to be a science teacher, because women don't become scientists. Anyway, I went to Oregon State and I was an education major. I had found out that my five dollars a week allowance didn't go very far. I got a job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant for $.80 an hour and a meal, which was not a very big meal, but anyway. The girl across the hall named Maybelle Keef [phonetic] said, you could earn a one dollar an hour working on campus washing dishes. So, I did. Then I was working as a 00:03:00student and that was for Dr. Virgil Freed, who was in Ag[riculture] chemistry. He was into instrumental analysis. There was this man down the hall who needed student help, named Sam Likens, and so I ended up working for him as his student. June 1, 1959, I started as a laboratory technician, full-time in his lab for $175 a month.

PK: And this was not a student job? This was a-

GN: A civil service. You worked 44 hours a week. I will say that most work did not get done on Saturday mornings, but that was the way it was.

TEM: Were you still a student then?

GN: Yeah, I was a student, but then I managed to flunk out of school, which is why I needed the full-time job. I eventually got a degree but that was 26 years later. I graduated in 1982, finally. I worked in the lab doing great things, like grinding hops and going out and helping in the field and things like that. We had, what I started learning instrumental analysis because that was the beginning of it, because Sputnik and all that happened in 1959 and somehow then in the early '60s money started coming into research, which is how I ended up with a job, really, because I was paid from a soft grant money from United States Brewers Association.

PK: Was that for your first job with Likens in 1959?

GN: Yeah.

PK: Can I clarify a couple dates?

GN: Sure.

PK: Before we move on? What was your birthday?

GN: 7-29-38 [laughs].

PK: 7-29-38, okay. You graduated high school?

GN: '56.

PK: '56 you graduated high school in Portland?

GN: Yes.

PK: Then did you start that-

GN: OSU in September of '56.

PK: Okay.

GN: That's how I ended up-I lived in Waldo Hall, where the whole history thing was about.

PK: Oh yeah. I read that online. What, I'm going to keep trying to move this back a little bit, too, you mentioned something really interesting, which is your science teacher in high school said if you're interested in science and you're a young woman you have to be a teacher. Did you have other friends that had similar interests? Or did you just kind of accept it? I'm just actually 00:06:00interested in that kind of social-

GN: Well, my grandmother had been a teacher, so that was in the background. That was a good thing to be. The other thing was I liked science and it was like, well, nobody, well I didn't know anybody who was in the scientific field. It was like-it was a high school counselor, who was a Latin teacher, but that's another story. I had her for classes and counseling.

PK: Was it chemistry, biology, or-?

GN: Well, when I went to high school instead of advanced placement, they had the Ford Foundation, which I guess is the same thing. I took math and chemistry and physics in that advanced placement, or whatever you want to call it. It was lovely. There'd be like 12 in a class. It was, you know, talk about individual 00:07:00attention. The chemistry teacher, Mr. Ingram, had worked on the atomic energy project. He wasn't just a, you know, a high school normal teacher. He'd actually experienced work outside. He did all sorts of funny experiments. They were interesting.

TEM: When you came to Oregon State as part of science education, did you take science classes here, too?

GN: Yes, well, you see in order to teach science at the time, you only had for math all you had to do was calculus. It was like one or two years of chemistry 00:08:00and physics. It was minimal hours. Most of it was, well, of course you have your basics you have to get out of the way anyway, but the stuff I took for education, like educational psychology, psychology, not very interesting. Actually, my psychology professor is still alive and I see him every once in a while. None of the education courses applied for anything else, I found out. Eventually when I went back because somebody prodded me into this, was that none of the education courses counted.

PK: What a waste.

GN: But in the meantime, I'd been taking things like statistics and computer courses. I ended up with a degree in general science with computer statistics and chemistry, which actually worked for my job.

PK: Growing up did you grow up in Laurelhurst Neighborhood?

GN: Yes, I went to Laurelhurst Grade School. This is before middle schools, but anyway.

PK: What are some of your memories growing up in Laurelhurst, which is [trails off inaudibly].

GN: Well, we were not the wealthy part of the neighborhood. It was on Broadway between 46th and 47th, which is over towards Standy [phonetic]. I walked to school every day, walked to high school every day. Had a science teacher in 00:10:00grade school, Mr. Ferguson, who-

PK: That memory, it's amazing.

GN: Well, I remember him because he printed. Engineering printing? You know, beautiful. Here we'd been trying to learn cursive, you know. I started printing in the eighth grade and I resisted writing any other way since then. He was a science teacher and we actually had a lab. It was not just a classroom kind of thing. He was very good. It was the basic kind of things that you're supposed to know.

TEM: It sounded like both of the science teachers you were talking about had a great impact on you.

GN: Well, I think, because, well they were enthusiastic. That was the big thing [laughs]. I had some other teachers that you thing, oh! The kinds with dyed hair 00:11:00and memorizing things until you were-oh, another teacher I remember is Mrs. Bartlet [phonetic] who taught algebra who was so different from, I mean when I was in school teachers were very blah. If they had any personality at all, they didn't show it in the classroom. She wore gypsy kind of clothes and drove a jeep. It was different, shall we say. You remember those. The grade school, of course, interesting about walking to school was you went by a miniature golf course. Of course, sometimes you took a little long to get home kind of thing. The other thing was you could cross the railroad tracks. There's a viaduct on 00:12:0047th that goes over the freeway and everything. Well, before the freeway there was just railroad tracks. There was a viaduct. Down on 39th there was a wooden trestle bridge, which we used to stand on and let the trains go by underneath because they were locomotives with steam and not diesel. Then of course you could go on the tracks and put pennies on the tracks and that's where the-and there was, the funny things you remember is like on the way home if I went home by the trestle you could walk through a pet store. I'm sure the man didn't appreciate it, but that was one of the things you did for fun.

PK: So you had fond memories growing up in Portland?

GN: Yeah [laughs].

PK: That's great. I grew up in Portland, too, and it's just changed.

GN: Yes. Well, you see when I went to Grant High School, there were three families that were black. In grade school there was only one family and that was when I was in eighth grade and that was a little upsetting to some people when they went to the dance classes and everything. It was sort of like, well-[laughs]. I remember the girl was my same age and her name was Dorothea Franklin [phonetic].

PK: That changed really when you were growing up during the World War II period when [trails off inaudibly].

GN: Yeah, because I had never seen anybody of different color. I guess when I was a small child I asked my mother did they live in houses, but, I guess I was exposed to too much National Geographic.

PK: Did you have, one question I'd like to ask, maybe more in high school, middle school or high school, did you have a sense of world events going around, the Cold War, or?

GN: We watched Eisenhower's inauguration in high school on a very itty bitty TV set, come to think of it. It was in the auditorium, and that was something. Well, and my parents read the paper and took lots of magazines. Of course, I don't read at all, but anyway. It was, well, the Korean War. There were brothers of people I knew who were in the Korean War. Then when I started at OSU the GI Bill, there were quite a few veterans.

PK: Was that a big transition for you to move on your own here? I know you've done the interview about the dormitory.

GN: Well, the high school, Grant High School, I had a graduating class of 00:15:00600-something and I was in classes, you know, 25, 30, not the lecture hall type things but I was, it wasn't that big of a shock. Of course, I goofed off and didn't really study the way I was supposed to. The other thing is the grade school, Laurelhurst Grade School, half the students went to Washington High School and half went to Grant. I didn't really know that many in high school. There was a girl named Joellen Wilson [phonetic] that I walked to school with every day and some other kids from Laurelhurst, but it wasn't like best friends or anything else. When I came to Oregon State, I didn't know anybody [laughs].

PK: What year was that again?

GN: 1956.

TEM: Were there, what was the percentage, your estimate of percentage, of people in your graduating class who went on to university? Was it an expectation that you would go on to university?

GN: I don't know how many. Quite a few did, though. What's strange, though, is that from the grade school, Allen Palmer [phonetic] , who's a retired dentist, I was a classmate of him. There were about four or five other people in Corvallis that I went to grade school with that are kind of weird. Don't even know them, but I mean it's like, oh! Laurelhurst, I think, had a very good reputation and 00:17:00Grant did, too, come to think. It was sort of like, I didn't want to be a secretary because I knew I was not, I took a typing class and practically failed. Summer, and I didn't want to get married and have a bunch of kids. It was like, well, what are you going to do? Well, you go to college. My cousins, some of them, they went to like community colleges. Some of them did go to college, not very many, but they all ended up working. I mean, the female ones.

PK: So, 1956 you get to OSU and when did you start working in the lab? Next year?

GN: That's what I can't remember. It's probably '57, '58. Well, '58 and '59 I 00:18:00was working in the lab and the year before that I think I was just part-time dishwasher for Dr. Freed.

PK: Do you remember, what do you remember about working with Likens. I've run into his name in the literature [Gail laughs]. Al didn't know him, I don't think.

GN: Oh, yeah, they worked together. But, they were completely different people [laughs]. You know, Al was kind of, he's very honest and he's, you know, when he says something he means kind of thing. Sam was a great party. I mean, if you wanted a party he was great to party with, but you couldn't trust him. He'd say, oh don't worry. We'll always look out for you. Then, finally when he retired it was like, well, you could move up to Washington. I thought, no I don't want to 00:19:00do that. He was fun to play with, but he was not so fun to work for sometimes. But he was great, full of ideas. He's one of those people who was always off the wall, kind of, which was great because he'd think of things that you wouldn't normally apply. He was very involved with the first, I don't know if he was the first one to do it, but Valentine's Ale bought hops from Oregon. They wanted it for the oil. If you've ever smelled Valentine's Ale, you take the cap off and you'd smell hop oil. They don't make it anymore. He was working with them to 00:20:00ensure the freshness and the picking of the Brewer's Golden Bullion at the ripe, height of ripeness, and so he did maturity samples of green hops, which I don't know if anybody was doing that at all. This is late '50s, where it was conductometric analysis. Then he did oil distillations. Man, I can't remember his name. Worked for Valentine's. He was, shall we say a character because he was a member of the John Birch Society and always carried a gun, which I felt was a little odd. Sam had his own little lab up in the Salem at the Kerr's 00:21:00[phonetic] hopyard. He would tell them when they should pick different fields.

TEM: What was his title?

GN: He was DA chemist. I don't know. He was the project leader before Al.

TEM: Okay.

GN: It was Stan Brooks and then Jack Horner, and then Sam Likens and then Al Haunold and John Henning.

PK: Was there a Bressman? Did he start to do something after he was?

GN: Who?

PK: I ran into his name, Bressman?

TEM: I think that was earlier, yeah. He may have been.

PK: Don't pay attention to me.

GN: D.E. Bolis [phonetic].

PK: I recognize that name, too.

GN: You should recognize that. He was the one that worked in Ag chemistry from 00:22:001917. He retired in the '60s. They first worked was on grading hops: appearance, aroma, that kind of thing, before analysis.

PK: So fast and I have so many questions. You came in with U.S. Brewers Association money, soft money?

GN: I think so, yeah.

PK: In 1958 or '59. And you were assigned to Likens or he hired you?

GN: He hired me.

PK: He hired you.

GN: I was state employed because it was a cooperative state-federal agreement. He had a courtesy appointment in Ag chemistry.

PK: Just like Al would eventually.

GN: Yeah, except Sam actually physically was in Ag chemistry.

PK: I guess Al was crop science, or was he-?

GN: Yeah, he was in crop science.

PK: You said you did instrumental analysis. You were working on-

GN: Alpha and beta acid analysis, which, when I first started working was a colorimetric, you know what Summerson photometers are?

PK: No.

GN: Well...

PK: I can guess, though.

TEM: Take my time.

GN: They had a photocell and a projection bulb and a filter and a meter. You read the absorption, only I don't know if it was a percent transmission. It wasn't absorbency, because it had no scientific, I mean there was no correlation with anything. You had to do your own, you know, how you calculated it. It was uranyl nitrate solution. You got alpha acids for some reason from that. Then you 00:24:00did things like total the resins. You evaporated and weighed them. Then you subtracted the alpha acid, oh, and then you did soft resins, which is the part that's soluble in petroleum ether. That was the soft resins and you subtracted the alpha from that and that gave you the beta. Then, you took total resins, yeah, took the soft resins from that and you got the hard resins and that was the deterioration products, or gamma acids, at the time. Anyway, you need grams of stuff before you could end up weighing them.

PK: Sure, that makes sense.

GN: That's why it was bucket chemistry.

PK: What did the brewers want to know about alpha and beta acids by that point, specifically?

GN: Well, they wanted to know how much there was because somebody had finally 00:25:00realized that you could predict the final bitterness if you knew how much you started with. It's actually just how much there was. The part that we got involved with and where it finally ended up was that the fact that the lupulin in the hops is about 75% alpha plus beta acids. Now, if you're going to have more alpha, you either have more lupulin or you change the ratio of alpha to beta in the resin. People didn't know that because they didn't do beta. Someone-until you start doing that it's hard to do hop breeding if you think 00:26:00you've got a good male, only it's not, because if you analyze male flowers like you do hops, it's like .001% alpha. But, if you take the lupulin glands and extract them out of the males, you get 75% of the glands are alpha plus beta so it's really easy to analyze.

PK: You mentioned the hops that you first started working on were the [inaudible] hops. Did you get a sense that most growers by that time had moved in the direction of the Boullion Northern Brewer-

GN: Oh yes.

PK: Because of downy mildew?

GN: Yeah because clusters were what were grown in Oregon. I think there's still some down at the Alpine Tavern.

PK: Wild.

GN: No, there's a hop garden there.

PK: Is there?

GN: Yes. They have hops that are very old. I know, because I've tested them. They're not very high alpha and they're pretty ill, but when the clusters 00:27:00started dying because of downy mildew is when they started going to things like fuggle, which is resistant. Then they had Brewers Golden Bullion. That's about all there was.

PK: Was there Northern Brewer, too?

GN: Very little. That was later.

PK: Because I read Hoerner's stuff. He wrote a report in 1940 that said the growers were.

GN: That's GR Hoerner, isn't it?

PK: GR Hoerner.

GN: H-o-r-n [PK interrupts].

PK: He's the one that does the memorandum for brewing.

TEM: I think it's E. H-o-e-r-n-e-r.

GN: Yeah, because Jack Horner is different.

PK: But he said in 1940 people were still growing cluster for the most part and only 10% fuggle because it didn't produce well.

GN: Right.

PK: But then I think this decade in the '40s and '50s is when people really shift in their thoughts.

GN: Well, oh dear what was-they had a marketing order.

PK: The [inaudible], I think.

GN: When the marketing order crashed is when all sorts of things happened. When they grew fuggle they got an exception. So, the Oregon Growers got an exception because it was a low-yielding hop. They kind of liked that. The other thing is this is when the people started getting uptight about seeded versus seedless, and "Washington hops were naturally seedless" because they didn't have any males. Whereas Oregon hops they put males in the fuggle fields to increase the yield, because you can get up to 25% increase with seeded.

PK: This is what happens in the Yakima Valley. They started exploding by '30 and taking over Willamette Valley because for all these reasons, they don't have [inaudible] and they don't have seeded hops. So, the question I've never gotten a straight answer too, and even Al has not given me a straight answer is where there native hops in the Willamette Valley?

GN: No.

PK: Why is that?

GN: I don't know. The native hops that you found are, the Cheerers [phonetic] of Minnesota, Manitoba, and the only ones they've found now are on... come to think of it they found them in New Mexico and Arizona.

PK: The four corners region is the new Mexicana's.

GN: Because when they went searching for them, but not in the Northwest.

PK: Not Washington either, then.

GN: No.

PK: The report that came out about ten years ago that said we just had a map and 00:30:00Oregon was the only state in the West that didn't have native hops. I need to contact this person. I need to get a hold of it. They're at the germ plasm depository. They haven't answered my calls.

TEM: We'll just drive over.

GN: [Laughs].

PK: Anyway, but it's interesting you say that, too.

GN: I know, let's see, when they made the collection of wild American hops.

PK: I'm sorry, I missed that. Can you start over?

GN: When they made the collection, I think Jack Horner was the one that went to New Mexico and all these places and then later, what's the man's name who was the USDA plant pathologist after Horner?

PK: I can't remember.

GN: He's a Lewis and Clark nut. You don't want to travel down the Columbia Gorge with him because you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know. He went back 00:31:00and tried to find some of these same places, but I don't think he found them in the Southwest. I mean, he did find them in Canada and Wisconsin.

PK: Did you write that article with Al that he published on the upper Midwest hops?

GN: No.

PK: Oh. But you knew about it?

GN: Well, we did the analysis [laughs]. I mean, it's the Indians on the bottom. That was what, the whole bit about wild Americans was Salmon in England said he used wild American progeny for bullion and Brewers Gold. He couldn't have though. I think he's mistaken. He's dead and nobody can argue. But, none of the wild Americans we have ever analyzed had high alpha. They always had very high beta and low alpha and they didn't have very much lupulin. None of them stored well.

PK: That's why they imported hops for hundreds of years.

GN: Well, the other thing is they had so few cones. They were always confused. I mean, you'd have males and then you'd have a female cone or you'd have female cones and then you'd have a male flower. They were usually not pure one or the other, because I have gone out there and collected the stupid things.

PK: Well, isn't it a kind of mystery? I visited Peter Darby last summer. I'm sure you know Peter. I visited him last summer, and basically we don't know the parent. It's still a mystery, right?

GN: Now, what Dr. Henning is doing is doing the gene analysis, because I asked 00:33:00him one time. I said, you know, is it like people and animals and stuff where the, what is it, mitochondrial DNA is descended from the female. You should be able to tell some of the ancestry.

PK: Can we take you back to the 1960s?

GN: Sure. A very good time.

PK: So, you worked with Sam Likins until?

GN: 1982, when he retired.

PK: What kind of changes? Because I know Al came in the mid '60s, actually after Rachel Carson in 1962, this brought in people wanted to breed more plants rather than have all the pesticides and herbicides, right?

GN: Yes.

PK: Can you talk about that period a little bit? The early '60s, and some of the changes there and particularly in light of Silent Spring?

GN: Well, one of the other things that happened was Stan Brooks was the project 00:34:00leader. I didn't know this at the time, but he was colorblind. He also didn't believe in chemical analysis. He was: observation, flowering date, amount of lupulin, amount of cones, this kind of physical characterization. Our chemical analysis just didn't appeal to him that much. Then Al came on and he was into, I mean he actually looked at our data on the alpha and beta acids. If you want a high alpha you're going to have to start with something high and then take a male that has a high ratio and then hopefully you get something. Anyway, and the other thing, but Al was really, his first-I don't know how many years, he was doing the triploid breeding, which Willamette, Columbia, all those hops, which 00:35:00were, you see, a grade helped to the Oregon local growers because they were naturally seedless and they had hybrid figure because they were triploids and they were very like fuggle, so.

PK: Who was breeding before Al came?

GN: Well, Stan Brooks.

PK: Stan Brooks. Well, they started the breeding program in 1930 and they didn't release anything.

GN: Until 1956.

PK: Until '56?

GN: Yes, I think. Cascade.

TEM: '56 was crossed in, or, Cascade was crossed in '56.

PK: Released in '72, I think.

GN: Okay.

PK: Did you get a sense about, was there pressure from the Brewers Association or for hop growers? Does it take even, Salmon said, it takes years and years and decades to release a hop. Was there a sense of anxiety, I've always wondered, in 00:36:00the department or in the-?

GN: Well, it was, let's put it this way-there was disappointment.

PK: From who?

GN: Well, the people who are paying the money. The hop growers and the brewers. But the brewers didn't ask for new varieties. They wanted an improved cluster, or they wanted improved something else. But if you said, we're going to give you a new variety, they didn't seem to be very interested in that part of it until much later. I mean, I always thought it was how could these people keep working on this for so long? [Laughs] because Sam started in '50... he was like '51 or '52, but to me the, I couldn't understand why they hadn't released anything. 00:37:00Cascade was released just because that was about the only one that looked very interesting. Then it turned out it was interesting for chemical reasons instead of the fact that it was disease resistant and high yield and all this other sort of garbage, which is kind of funny. Well, they would have, what do you call them, off-station plots? Where they'd plant 50 or so hills of a new variety in a hop grower's yard and "observe them" and see which ones were best.

PK: You mentioned the Kerr family. Who else were they working with?

GN: Goschies.

PK: Goschies early on.

GN: Soffers. Oh dear... Fobert?

PK: Yeah.

GN: And then there's the Smiths, were often where they have the rodeo.

PK: I know Coleman.

GN: Yeah, the Colemans, too. I mean, when they had these soft station trials, I would go up and take maturity samples from them. I got to drive to all these good places.

PK: What was your relationship with the growers like? Even early on in the first decade?

GN: Well, I would come up in my own car because I smoked at the time. That was fine, because if you come up with a USDA car, somehow the workers sort of leave or they did then. But it was still bursarial labor, but I was like they sort of avoided official people. I was just a short little girl who came up and picked hops. I mean, they were nice to me.

TEM: I've heard that from other people about the impact of USDA cars coming in and the workers suddenly disappearing.

PK: What about the families, not just the workers, but the-or did you not interact with them?

GN: Oh, I saw, oh dear, one year an English girl came and stayed and she was observing hops and this was probably late '60s and we went to some labor camps and I had never seen anything like that. It was awful. I mean, it was like you talk about slave labor. Wooden sheds with bare boards and a central hut with showers. Really, really, really primitive, shall we say.

TEM: Was that in the eastern side of the state, like east of-?

GN: No, no. This is up by Salem.

TEM: Okay.

GN: The one labor camp I remember was by Independence. But, then, let's see-why'd I think it was so much later, but the Washington Growers started actually building facilities, and I think Coleman's has some houses that, you know... then what happened was that after the end of the bursarial program people lived here, so it's like there were full-time employees.

PK: That's an interesting transition. Not a lot of people talk about it, I guess. Particularly the move to Mexican labor, particularly during mechanization 00:41:00of harvest.

GN: The thing was, I think was the Second World War and mechanization and they needed them.

PK: Yeah.

GN: But now they've mechanized more things.

PK: Do you think, when you grew up did you ever hear about the hop fiesta or the hop picking? Did your parents do that growing up?

GN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They were middle class, you see [laughs]. I descended to the lower, but no it's funny. I had relatives that live in Prosser, Washington, and that's surrounded by hop yards all over. I used to go visit them in the summers. I knew what hops looked like and I've been around a hop yard, but I never, you know, gotten that close to them. I came down to Oregon State and one of the things I learned how to do was to drive a tractor. They didn't let me get out of first [gear], though. I went very slowly [laughs] 00:42:00through the field, because you get fired if you knock down the hop yard.

TEM: I could imagine that would be not good.

PK: But all of these changes that were happening in that period that you were hired. I just finished writing a chapter on this period, and it's really, and maybe I'm asking for your perspective, too, but it really moved into specialty crops and diversified farms to specialized agriculture, hundreds of acres, mechanized harvest, tractors, plows, chemicals, you know from the World War II period. Did you get a sense of all that? Because you really entered when it's kind of more industrial specialty crop farming?

GN: The USDA, or whatever it is, you know the experimental hop yard, when I first worked it was hand-picked. They had people come in and pick.

PK: Students?

GN: Yes. They had yard boys that would, they'd let down the wires so you could 00:43:00reach it. That's what they were doing when I first started working.

PK: [inaudible].

GN: Yes, and then they got their first mechanical picker out there, which was from the-hmm?

PK: A mobile one? The one you take out to the field?

GN: Well, it was so old it wasn't mobile anymore [laughs]. The other thing, well, it didn't work that way because it was small plots of like five hill plots. It's not efficient to try. So, the machine was stationary but it was meant to be a portable one. It had a Model-T engine on it with a crank start that you could lose your hand on if you did it wrong. It was the first one I'd ever seen, and that was-talk about Rube Goldberg, it was nothing protected. It's chain and belts and everything else going all at once.

PK: That is so interesting.

GN: Yes. When I think about it, it's more why more people weren't injured is-[laughs].

TEM: What was it like... I was going to move more into office culture, but if you had other?

PK: Perhaps cutting work, technology questions? Just because it's such an interesting period.

GN: [Laughs] It was.

PK: So, when did that change? When did it change to more mechanized everything? Probably within your first few years?

GN: Well, in the early '60s the growers were further, much further ahead than the hopyard here, because they had more money, I think. They started, well, one of the other things that happened was they had enough fires in the hop dryers that they went to concrete and they went to gas instead of oil. They quit using sulfur. Actually, they used sulfur for a long time. That was always interesting. 00:45:00You'd see these great big pans of burning sulfur and fans sucking them into the dryers.

PK: Did they use it probably until the '70s or so?

GN: Yeah. The other thing, OSU had a dryer that's where the new ag and life science building is. It was this old wooden thing.

TEM: On 35th?

GN: No, no. Where the physical.

TEM: Oh, oh, oh.

GN: The new Ag and whatever it is. There was an old building there and it had this wooden hop dryer in it. When I think about it, why that never burned down I don't know. They had a full-sized almost bailer. I think I only saw it once or twice. To me it was all very interesting. Then they got a lot of money one time. 00:46:00They built a hop dryer out at Lewis and Brown farm-not Lewis Brown, where the KOAC transmitter is.

TEM: On the way to Albany.

GN: Yep. Anyway there is out there a very nice, two model hop dryers. You used to have to drive the stuff from across the river out to there. They had a miniature hop bailer. This is when we started doing research on storage because it was like some varieties of hops store very well. Cluster happens to be one of them. When they introduced all these new varieties everybody says, what's wrong with them? They're going to pot too fast. Well, it was that they needed one they needed to cold storage.

TEM: Where did you store them on campus?

GN: Well, they didn't really... well, we stored them in our freezers. When we made model 8' x 6' x 6' miniature hop bales and then that was another little one of those things you learn how to do is make miniature hop bales. It had a hydraulic arm, I mean, not arm, but whatever it comes down and squishes, so you put a piece of plywood and then you put your hops in the shoot, weighed them, and then you put another board on top and then this thing came down and compressed it. Then you fed wires from the backside to the front and twisted them and then you let the pressure loose and you had this little bale. Once you 00:48:00were under compression if you lifted, like four or five days, when you took the boards off it didn't expand that much.

PK: That seems fun. I would like to do that. Did you work closely with the other state land grant school scientists from USDA or the land grant schools, do you remember?

GN: Oh yeah. Of course, names, they're like filtering through my head.

PK: Did you work closely with Washington or Prosser folks?

GN: Yeah. What's his name that was in Idaho for years and years and years and years? Anyway, he's the one that developed Talisman and some other varieties. The reason he got those was we sent him a selected group of males which were then used to pollinate Cluster and other varieties he had. I'll think of his name next week.

PK: I get the sense, because Willamette Valley had this strong tradition of-

GN: We did the analysis for them.

PK: Uh-huh.

GN: We actually did some of the analysis for Washington for a while. I'm trying to-Steve Kenny has been there a while now. Before him, well, they had Scotland and what was diseases and entomology were their basic main-disease, and they didn't do as much hop breeding because USDA said hop breeding was supposed to be in Oregon and the Washington hop growers didn't like that.

PK: Interesting. I always wondered about that.

GN: One of the reasons they didn't want it in Washington was it would have all these male hops, which would contaminate their pure...

PK: Then the last question I thinking of, sorry to interrupt you, was do you 00:50:00remember the impact of Silent Spring?

GN: Oh yes.

PK: Can you talk about that a little bit? Both in your life and then your work?

GN: Well, money [laughs].

PK: There you go.

GN: You see, because all of a sudden it became possible to get new equipment and everything else. What really, ag chemistry, not the hop project so much, but ag chemistry was, you know there was all this interest in what happens if, or, what are you going to do with and that kind of thing, residues and so forth. Hops, well, I think the increased funding from the USDA, because they got more entomology and more plant pathologists involved.

PK: Did that, in turn, help breeding, too.

GN: Yes. Well, and now, or the last years I was working, it was all integrated pest management and as little pesticide as possible.

PK: That's good. I'm going to use that as a quote. What's the biggest response to Carson? "Well, money!" [Laughs].

GN: Well, it's true! [Laughs] I think it was just the fact of science hadn't had a really infusion of new money for research for so long. When I started working they had homemade equipment. You didn't go out to so-and-so HP and buy a gas chromatograph you made your own. They did. The first one I used was a homemade 00:52:00kind of thing.

TEM: Was there money that came into the department or to research to study pesticides?

GN: Oh, yes.

TEM: It would be a fair thing to say that there was an infusion of funding to make pesticides and then an infusion of money to make things that didn't need pesticides?

GN: Then the other thing is as, and it still happens, which I find very irritating, is the people that go out and test pesticides and herbicides on plants are partly paid by the companies that manufacture them. So, of course they're going to say they're effective. It's real hard to get somebody to be really honest and say it doesn't make any difference if you use that one or that one, but they have gotten better on that. The other one is that the cost of 00:53:00pesticides is finally being factored into the, because when you breed the first recommendations it was, you need three treatments, which adds up the money.

PK: Did you get a sense that back in the early '60s the growers were concerned about not just productivity but the repercussions of the herbicides?

GN: Oh yes. The brewers are the ones who get uptight because if there's any possible contamination that would get in the beer, they get very excited about that.

PK: Were you doing any tests related to that to see if the pesticides or herbicides?

GN: I didn't, we didn't do anything with the pesticides residues. That was 00:54:00entomology and Terrier [phonetic] retired a long time ago. You know Cougamoge [phonetic] worked for him. In ag chemistry there were a lot of people doing pesticides analysis.

PK: Have you looked through the pages of their various journals from the Pacific Hop Grower to the Hopper and all these things that came out in the '30s, '40s, '50s, I think even the early '60s, there's just ads: "DDT is the next miracle drug for hop growers. I'm John Hops and I approve this message." Then it's vapatone [phonetic] or diatone and all this different stuff. So, it's a new chemical every year, right?

GN: See, that was it.

PK: And it still is to some degree.

GN: Yes.

PK: But it's more regulated.

GN: Well, and the idea of integrated pest management is much better at 00:55:00controlling things.

TEM: Was there any talk about or did you do any work on growing hops in southern Oregon or central Oregon?

GN: Grants Pass had a hops until, when was it, the '60s? Late '60s? Route 66, that TV show, had an episode shot in Grants Pass showing hop yards. We analyzed samples from Sacramento: Sloughhouse. I mean, I had relatives lived in Sacramento in these subdivision names are names of old hop areas. You think, oh! What's his name, what is it? Anchor Steam Beer? He grows hops down there. It's 00:56:00one of the few hopyards left. They used to be more in eastern Oregon. But the land's too valuable.

PK: Fred Eckhardt always wondered why there wasn't hop growers in eastern Oregon, because it's dryer there.

GN: Well, they had hops there.

PK: Yeah, well, I mean after the, I don't know who-

GN: Well, but the water. I mean, it was, there's still hops: Parma, that area. Napa. Northern Idaho, I think.

PK: Didn't A-B own that?

GN: Yes. Northern Idaho.

PK: Did you have a, you said you had some questions about personalities?

TEM: Well, I was just, I was curious. The last time we talked we talked about how much fun it was to work in your office and department. I think I was more curious on the I guess employee relation side.

GN: Well, you know before when I went to work in ag chemistry there was like 40 people, two secretaries for the department head who took care of everybody's correspondence, manuscripts, you know and whatever. There wasn't any differentiation between Ph.D.s and the lowest person on the totem pole. We all shared coffee rooms and Christmas parties and picnics. In fact, the picnic I went to Saturday, [unintelligible] was there and his daughter was there and I 00:58:00can remember when she was a little kid. It used to be, it was a very friendly, it wasn't. I had a friend that, well, she's the one telling me I should go wash dishes on campus, Mable, who after she got her master's she went back to one of those research institutes in New York and said that the hierarchy was, you could only talk to the people on your same level. There was nothing mixing. Well, ag chemistry got big and that's what happens, especially when you bring in bright, young Ph.D.s who were full of it.

TEM: Were there other women working who were doing the same type of work that you were doing at the-?

GN: Well, there was a lady up in Washington. There was somebody in Idaho. In ag 00:59:00chemistry, I was thinking about that-there were like three or four people in a department that were not secretaries. Of course, the first scientific, or not scientific, but anyway, convention I went to it's like what does your husband do? [Laughs]. You think, oh!

PK: Did you have a follow-up question?

TEM: Are you going to take my follow-up question?

PK: Well, I just want to know-you know, I spent a lot of time, I think we both spent a lot of time talking to Al. So, when Al got there he wasn't originally a hop breeder. He was there to do other work. Can you talk about that transition, 01:00:00maybe in the mid to late '60s now?

GN: Well, see, when Stan Brooks got promoted that made everybody feel [deep breath]. It was like well, we can do some other things now. So, instead of this strictly horticulture it was more breeding, scientific, not the, well if you read like the first reports, they were more involved with how many plants to the acre and that kind of thing. It wasn't-I don't know what you call it. It was a very physical kind of work, which involved awful things like counting the number of glands on male flowers. All sorts of good things that drove you up the wall. 01:01:00Yeah, one of the things that Sam got involved with, when I think about it was really funny, was okay you're doing green hop analysis is when hops get too ripe they shatter when you put them through the picking machine. It depends on the time of day how much they shatter. We were doing these weird tests on picking hops every four hours, night and day, and then putting them in a stove pipe and putting some stoppers in them and putting them on a shaker and then counting how many whole cones and how many broken cones. It's better if you pick hops really early in the morning.

PK: So, there's more creative experiments.

GN: Experiments, yes. The other thing is pluckability. How much force does it take to pull a cone off the branch?

TEM: How do you measure that?

GN: They've got these little things that measure force and the little dial and it stops when it pulls it off.

TEM: I just imagined-"this feels hard."

GN: Yeah [laughs]. Oh, and then we did some research on the top and bottom of hop dryers because they dry them in four foot layers and the bottom is much dryer than the top. It also loses more alpha acids. But it depends on variety. It wasn't just straight take the hops grain them up and analyze them. We got involved with some more creative kind of-and that happened after Stan left 01:03:00because he was this "I am never wrong" kind of personality. Chuck Zimmerman was the one who got involved with the male analysis and that's who was Steve Kenny's predecessor at Washington at Prosser. He was the one that, Chuck was the one that said, you know, instead of doing this dry sieving where you take the male flowers and you put them in a shaker, why don't use water? If you take the dried male flowers and agitate them with water and then pour them through the sieves, the pollen goes through 200 mesh and the lupulin stays on the 60, so you can get 01:04:00rid of all the pollen and do the lupulin analysis.

PK: When did the growers in the Willamette Valley start growing seedless hops? Was it after the Willamette was released?

GN: Well, they were getting premiums for seedlessness. Al also released some triploid males, which would stimulate the growth but the seeds would abort and they would be, because they did the percent seed by weight. If a seed never develops, and you get some stimulation, so they-

PK: Can you tell us about, do you remember the triploid experiments? Or how that was going on? Was it interesting for you as a scientist to say, oh we're looking for a seedless hop? Were you involved with that?

GN: No, Al was the one who did that. He was the one who developed it. It's not 01:05:00something you do overnight. It took him four or five years in the greenhouse. Because you don't just get triploids. Instead of 30, you get 29 and 28 and 31.

PK: With his background in wheat genetics.

GN: Yes.

PK: He [inaudible] that right?

GN: Yes. Because that's what he was doing before he came here.

PK: Okay, that was mostly Al then. What were you doing? Did you say you graduated in '72?

GN: '82.

PK: Oh, '82. You had a whole decade before that. The Cascade come down in early 1970s. How does that transform, we've already talked about transformations in kilns and technology and pesticides. Did you get a sense that transformed anything or was it kind of just people were a little bit...?

GN: Well, trying to get somebody to buy it was the big thing. It was only released because Coors said they were interested. The problem turned out to be they liked Oregon Cascade, but there wasn't enough of it. They said, well, we should grow it in Washington. They got a lot more acres. It turns out the climate is just enough different is it doesn't turn out quite the same. The other thing in Washington they always had to harvest early because they were used to early cluster, and it never really got to its potential. I mean, they would say it was like 5.5%, 6% and we were getting 7.5%, 8% but we were harvesting a week or two later. They said Cascade was a lousy hop because...

PK: Coors said that?

GN: Yep.

TEM: Did money come in at that time, too? Was there money that came in with here's a great hop that you released let's fund more research?

GN: No, it was just to keep the holding kind of thing.

PK: Did you get put on hard money during this period, or you were always working?

GN: I was always soft money. When the U.S. Brewers Association decided not to fund, and I can't remember what year it was, then they, some of the brewers got together with the growers and formed the whatever it is that's funding-

PK: The hop commission?

GN: Yeah, well, no that was to regulate the marketing order. But the, now I can't remember what they're called. It was the replacement for the U.S. Brewers Association. They funded my salaries. Also, after Sam retired I think I got 40% of my salary was from USDA. Then I was making too much money for everybody.

PK: Were you worried ever on soft money about job security?

GN: Well, yeah.

PK: Well, I didn't know if you predicted...

GN: A couple times it was like, you know, I actually cried one time because you can't take that money away. It was certainly up and down, because during the '70s we had myself and another full-time person and two or three student help. When I retired, there was me and one student help. I ended up doing what I had been doing in the beginning.

PK: What other kind of skills or what do you remember about later maybe in the '70s or early '80s? What do you remember that was fun or maybe jaded?

GN: Well, getting to have new toys because the instruments, you know this is all 01:09:00the microprocessor. The first calculator we had, well we had a 10-key where you pulled the lever. Then we got this little tiny thing that had a memory that cost $300. Now they're like $2 or $3. Then we started analyzing the data was what was different. We were collecting all this information. You had 19 columns of data for each sample and then if you have 2,000 samples you know that any way trying to type that up is going to make a mistake. I used to write those out by hand and then we started using the computer. The mainframe. Then we were spending so much money in the 1970s that we could afford our own little PC.

PK: Did that save you time?

GN: Hmm?

PK: It saved you time?

GN: Oh yes. Of course the first programs-this was before Microsoft, we wrote ourselves in Fortran and Basic and HP Basic and Quick Basic and all sorts of funny things.

PK: Did you write those?

GN: Yeah.

PK: That's so neat.

GN: Then, that's what we used for many, many years. Then of course Microsoft came along. My little program I was very proud of it. It did multiple regression and it could do histograms and all sorts of things. To me, Excel is not as good as what I was using. But, Dr. Henning, of course was into computers and so I had 01:11:00to switch all the old data onto Excel.

PK: Wow.

GN: Oh and they had a little thing is we had an HP 86-B, and the floppy discs, 640k. You can't get 19 columns of numbers on an 80-character IBM card. So, you drop all the decimal points. Anything that was calculated from the data in there you did it when it was printed out. Oh, it was lots of fun [laughs].

TEM: [Laugh].

PK: That's hilarious.

GN: When we started out we were doing the first computer I ever saw was in the basement of Ag hall and it was punch paper tape. That was awful. I took a 01:12:00course: computer coding, and it was hexadecimal. I never did anything with that. Then when they finally got things going and they got the mainframe that's when we used the IBM cards. Then we started entering the data from Telex and it was on nine-track tapes.

PK: I was thinking I can't imagine. Can you?

TEM: No.

GN: [Laughs] Well, when you wanted to do something you called up the computer center and told them to mount the tape. Then you could access it. The printout was over at the computer center.

TEM: That must have had an influence on what you studied, then, when you went 01:13:00back to school?

GN: Well, yeah. There were a couple courses I took that were very easy because I'd been doing them all the time [laughs]. Like, statistics and that was the only course I ever took where I got a 100% all the way through.

PK: What inspired you to go back to school?

GN: Well, I needed a degree.

PK: Oh you had to get it?

GN: Well, I didn't have to get it but I knew that I-my job security would be a little better with one and that was when Sam retired. I don't know how long after that. I went to research assistant. When I retired, because I couldn't get promoted on the civil service because I was a chemist, too, and you had to have so many people working for you before you could go any further. I went on the academic, and it was research assistant. Then when I retired I was a senior 01:14:00research assistant. I said, I was the most senior they had. Yeah, and I couldn't have become a research assistant without a degree.

TEM: What year did you retire?

GN: January 1, 2003. Actually, I didn't retire. I stayed on three or four months to, "train my replacement."

PK: Did you get a sense of the craft beer stuff going on during the '70s and '80s? Or was it not until later on?

GN: Well, what was it? Well, what's his name in Oregon Trail, Dave Wills has been doing that for years. Bert Grant, Yakama Brewing, he worked for S.S. 01:15:00Steiner, the hop broker. Before that he worked for Canadian breweries. That was the first microbrewery that I really, I had been through it and all that sort of stuff.

PK: Did your department or did your colleagues have a relationship with those people then? Because I got a sense that that didn't happen until later on where actually the brewers and the hop growers are working closer together during the '90s.

GN: Microbrewers still, well, I don't know. I think they go off on their own little thing. They're not too happy with people saying, why are you doing that? Well, back where brewers, a lot of the ones like Bert Grant and so forth were 01:16:00people that'd come from commercial breweries and had some experience. A lot of the newer ones are like they decided it was a good idea kind of thing. Now, of course, you can go to school and learn about this.

PK: To open a brewery and...

TEM: That reminds me, then, that you were there when the fermentation science program was at [inaudible]. Did that have any impact on the work that you did? Having an undergraduate program dedicated to fermentation science?

GN: Well, with somebody, I mean, getting involved in taste panels and stuff. Not really. The people who told us, what they wanted were the brewers and growers. 01:17:00It's funny that Cascade is still around because it makes a really indistinct beer, which I just find very amusing. It's kind of like ha! I remember that one before it was released.

PK: It does. It kind of creates this interesting part of the story. When I was in England last year they're growing Cascades in England now.

GN: They grew them in China.

PK: Really?

GN: Yes.

PK: I thought they grew clusters in China.

GN: Well, they probably do, but they also were growing Cascade, which is kind of like...

PK: Very interesting. One question I wanted to ask earlier, was it mostly A-B 01:18:00and Schlitz and Pabst that you worked with? Who am I forgetting?

GN: Millers.

PK: And Miller, yeah. Was it mostly Millers that worked with...?

GN: Well, there were some, Schlitz and Millers and A-B and what's another couple, Coors and Strohs all had people who were interested in hops and new about them. When they were on these panels about hop research and so forth it wasn't this blank, I mean, some people get sent from the brewers because they got a junket to the Northwest but it was people who actually knew about hops. Meilgaard, Morten Meilgaard is he still alive? He's the one that first published 01:19:00about cohumulone in 1954.

PK: Is that right?

GN: He worked for Stroh's brewery for a long time. He started out in Denmark. People kept finding things out about alpha acids and so forth. Every time they'd find something else then we'd have to try and analyze for it: cohumulone, which is that nice little compound that has some anti-cancer.

TEM: Were you doing testing on that, the health aspects?

GN: No. No. Fred Stevens worked for Dr. Deinzer, and he's now at the Linus Pauling Institute was the one that was doing all the mass spectrometry and 01:20:00identification of compounds and stuff. They worked with somebody on that efficacy or whatever you want to call it.

PK: But didn't by the '80s and '90s you were moving towards the super alphas, right, and also the nobles for the answer to the American and European noble, what would you call that?

GN: Well, that's what the fuggle, I mean the triploids were. Well, the idea was that if you had- European hops always had some "characteristics." One of them was they didn't have very much alpha. Two, they had a very low cohumulone. Three, they didn't have very much myrcene in the hop oil. That was complete opposite of something like cluster: hallertau, teton-a, those varieties are-

PK:[inaudible].

GN: Yeah. It's still, I think still happens. We export to Germany because our hops are cheap and import from Germany because they have noble hop aroma, which is kind of like... and we found out one of the reasons that when you get European hops here and they use them in the breweries and they have low myrcene it's because they take some six months to get from there to here and they lose it. We had a terrible time for a long time, they'd say our hops had too much myrcene and it can't be a European type hop if it's got too much myrcene. Then we'd let them age for several months and then they were much more acceptable because they'd lost enough, but it was Deinzer's group that we were the ones 01:22:00that found out that some of the things that make hop aroma are the oxidation products of the oil that only form after things have sat for a while, which is what happens with European hops and here we'd been trying so hard to get good storage, you know? Which is sort of like, ahh!

PK: What are the ones that came out in the '90s? The noble that you and Al were working on? Is it nuggets and...?

GN: No, that's high alpha.

PK: Oh. It's high alpha. That was before, right?

GN: Yeah.

PK: Can you talk about the high alphas a little bit?

GN: Well, that was...

PK: Is Chinook in there?

GN: Yeah, that came from Washington. I won't talk about it. There's competition. 01:23:00You have to admit. Well, I can't recognize some of the, I looked at some of the names of [inaudible]. I think, where did that come from?

PK: Yeah, it's insane.

GN: There's so many of them that I don't know.

PK: We'll have to talk about nugget, maybe. It was in the '80s.

GN: Oh, that's a beautiful hop. Have you ever seen it?

PK: Mm-hmm.

GN: It is a nugget. It's nice little, hard as a rock sort of thing. High alpha pretty good storage and low cohumulone.

PK: When you're working with all the data, do you kind of-I can't imagine what that process is like when you're close to releasing a hop and you're breeding these hops and you're like, oh this one looks good, but it has yet to be [inaudible], right? Can you talk about that a little bit?

GN: Well, when they do process, you can have like 1,000 seeds from one year's 01:24:00thing and if they're lucky 80% of it will be females. When they plant them it takes, you can analyze them the first year but you're not too sure about the results. The second year you analyze them and you say, oh, this one looks good and so you end up with 50%. Then they plant those in groups of five hill plots. Then you analyze them and you can find out more about storage and some other stuff. That's about the time they go from 50% to maybe 4% or 5%, and then they put them out on the growers hopyards for them to look at, too. That's when they start making. Then when Anheuser-Busch is the one that says we can't make pilot brews with less than 200 pounds of hops, well when you have five hills you don't 01:25:00have 200 pounds. You have to practically grow an acre or two. Then they will take the hops and try them out. Then sometimes you get to that point and it depends who's doing evaluation at the brewery, whether they like them or not. They'll make hop teas and that kind of stuff. We're involved, I mean we were involved to the point where they got them down to 5% and then it was like the hop growers and the brewers were the ones who were evaluating.

PK: Did you feel invested in, did you [laughter].

GN: Of course! [Laughs].

PK: Cheer them on?

GN: Well, there's one hop that never got released that was called "technician's preferred." I think they actually gave it a serial, yeah, such a number and 01:26:00there may be a name. Anyway, it was this hop that made the best home brew, lab brew. You could over hop it. Most of the time you over hop it you ended up with something like India Pale Ale and some bitter that you, but this you could like add more than you should and it would still taste good. It had real low cohumulone so it foamed like had a head on it. It was a lovely hop. But it didn't yield very well. Al kept it for years because we made home brew in the lab [laughs]. It was a very nice hop. I don't know if they still got it around.

PK: What did you call it, technician's preferred?

GN: Technicians preferred. I don't know what, I think it actually got a name, but I can't remember. I think Anheuser-Busch actually made a brew with it one time, but... well, we did lab brews. I mean, most of the time the hops were sent 01:27:00off to the brewers and they did their own pilot brews, but it was kind of fun to try because the-Schlitz got involved one time we did, and I think nugget was part of that before it was a variety, was different levels of cohumulone versus what the beer was like. It turns out that you don't have to test it to tell. You could just pour them. The ones with the head had the low cohumulone. It wasn't a very scientific way, but it was like, oh.

TEM: So, brewing was happening at that point. Were there pilot brew facilities in, what's it called, where animal sciences is now?

GN: No. We didn't do pilot brews until they got something in food science.

TEM: In [inaudible] .

GN: Yeah.

TEM: You were much more on the home brew.

GN: Well, it was for fun. It of course was all illegal and all that sort of stuff. Fortunately, when we were doing that we were on the fourth floor of Weniger.

TEM: Oh, in Weniger. Okay.

GN: Then when he moved into the new Ag and Life Science it was much harder to do because we're on the first floor and people wandering through all the time, "what are you doing?" [laughs]. But as I said, the most fun was the new toys, because spectrometry, recording spectrophotometers, which everybody has one on their lab bench now, was something that they had one in the whole department 01:29:00when I started working and gas chromatographs, HPLC, microbalances-the first balances I used were the kind with two pans then you watched the thing go back and forth.

PK: Things got more fun and easier?

GN: Well, when I retired we had the kind of balance that you'd put it on there and press the button and it goes to the computer. It's like, ha! [laughs]. Yeah, and the other thing was the spectrophotometer we had it also, I mean it sent the data to the computer and did the calculation and all that sort of stuff. All these microprocessors, amazing. Oil distillation unfortunately didn't change. 01:30:00There's no way you can get a good sample out of a small amount of hops and people have tried it for years and years and years and years, liquid CO2 extraction. I always liked the steam distillation because you got enough oil that you could store it and you can compare it to the oil you got from the variety 20 years ago. We were able to show that some varieties had gotten mixed up just from the oil composition. I got involved with one of those suits once because somebody sold Coors some German hops that weren't German hops.

PK: Wow. It's like that could be a TV show.

GN: It was like-oops. People got in trouble for that one, too. At one time Germany was selling more Hallertau hops than they could grow.

PK: Where did they get them?

GN: They weren't Hallertau.

PK: Whose were they?

GN: Well, they were some other varieties of hops grown in Germany, but they weren't-

PK: Oh. Well, they started growing the [inaudible], too, by the late '70s. That was what they were trying to pass off, maybe?

GN: No. It was, I can't remember what it was, but it was like supposed to be one and it wasn't and it was like oh, you could tell because one has farnesene and the other one doesn't.

PK: The further along, obviously you had a lot of fun when you were working, too. Did you become interested in, you know, how the yearbooks and just really detailed records. I know John doesn't do that anymore. People before all the way back to Sam in 1904 are the first Hop Breeder. Did you read through those and 01:32:00get a sense?

GN: Oh yeah.

PK: Did you use those for research all the time? Did you have that sense of a history, too?

GN: Well, I'm a reader so I just, I wanted to find out everything I could. I read a lot of the literature and so forth. The other thing is I would read science and you get some weird ideas. Sometimes you think, oh I wonder if that would work if you... kind of thing. See, our greatest achievement is applied to-nothing to do with hops. It's the Likens and Nickerson distillation extraction apparatus. It's used in the perfume business and also trying to get parts per billion out of things of essential oils.

PK: This intervention from the lab?

GN: Yes.

PK: That's been appropriated elsewhere?

GN: Yes. It's been cited all over the place.

PK: What is it called again?

GN: Likens-Nickerson Distillation Extraction Apparatus. Somewhere I've got the paper, but it's in there somewhere. 1950-was it '59? I don't. Anyway, it was one of those things that Sam applied for the patent and unfortunately the paper had been published too long before [laughs].

PK: That's so interesting, but that's how science works a lot of time.

GN: It was one of those things, it's oil distillations, well, if you do the steam thing and then at the same time you distill a solvent and when they meet on the condenser you can extract the oil components into the solvent which concentrates them because if you're talking about beer analysis, we're talking 01:34:00about parts per billion. Anyway, if you took nine liters of beer you could get enough in the pentane to analyze it on a gas motograph. When I think about it, the sensitivity has increased about 10,000 times from when we were doing it.

PK: Wow.

GN: The other accomplishment that we really did was the hop storage index because you can tell from the spectrophotometric analysis of hops how much alpha and beta acids have been lost up until that point. That was one of the things that made the big difference in hop analysis was going from the gravimetric 01:35:00methods to spectrophotometric, was that you could get alpha and beta acids at the same time and you could also figure out if the hop was a good or bad storage hop.

TEM: What year was that?

GN: Oh, dear. I don't know. A long time ago. Sixties. Oh, that distillation was '64 and the hop storage index, I can't remember. We got in long involved discussions because we proposed the index of deterioration, and of course, oh no you can't do that. That sounds bad. That's how we ended up with storage index.

PK: [Laughs]. I know things changed a lot now that you're retired. I don't know 01:36:00if you want to talk about that or not. A lot of things just changed in general in America.

GN: [Laughs] Well let-I'm trying to think what year it was.

PK: '96, I think. Didn't Al retire in '95 or '96.

GN: I guess so, yeah. Well, I was sort of let alone for a while, which is very nice. Then Dr. Henning became more conscious of the world and what was going on and decided he really liked the money I was getting, so he spent part of it [laughs]. I had been trying to save money to buy a new gas chromatograph and I thought, well, if I got half of it then I could go to the brewers and say, okay, would you give me the rest? Well, unfortunately Dr. Henning overspent his account and that money went away. I really was upset.

PK: I can imagine.

GN: Then, the final thing was one, I'm not into gene jockeys. I mean, it's all very nice and I'm very happy that they're doing it, but it's just not the kind of thing I want to do and couldn't anyway. When I got moved, well, see when Sam retired, I didn't have anybody in ag chemistry to protect me. Any time they wanted some room, they'd take it away from me. Then, after Al retired we had been in the Ag and Life Sciences building for four or five years. In 1998, I 01:38:00think, '99, got moved to 35th and Campus Way, that USDA building. I, like an idiot, I tried to make the best of things, you know? But it turns out the cold water isn't cold enough to do steam distillations. The ventilation isn't good enough to take care of the odor of the hops and there was about four or five other things. It was the smallest lab I'd ever been in. So, it was like: retire.

PK: It just was continually decreasing support.

GN: Yes. Yes. Dr. Henning wasn't doing all the crosses that Al did. It wasn't the thousands of samples that...

PK: Sure. But that's also because you could patent hops.

GN: Yeah. Once everybody had figured out you could find a male not just looking 01:39:00at how much pollen it shed but actually doing analysis. That's what made a big difference, because John Ahoss, Gene Probasco [phonetic] was doing crosses.

PK: So it becomes privatized. Is that right around then in the mid '90s?

GN: Mm-hmm.

PK: By then, craft beer is a thing? Right? By the mid '90s craft beer is a thing and it is still growing. I just keep thinking when I went out to this field in England last year that they're growing the Cascade there and they're using the Cascades-I don't know if you read this, there's a new book called, The Audacity of Hops. It's about the influence of American craft beer on the world. Do you think about that? Do you think about, hey, I was part of these experiments? The world is changing because of some of this research.

GN: To me, it's ironic. You know that we were so good that nobody needs us anymore [laughs]. We actually seceded but not quite the way we wanted to. I think about that every once in a while.

PK: The laws weren't in your favor, maybe.

GN: Hmm?

PK: Plant and patent laws weren't in your favor when you were doing that.

GN: Well, and they never have been. I mean, since it was public money anyway.

PK: Yeah, well, that's true.

GN: It should have been.

PK: That's true.

GN: I think some of the, say recognition, should have been to Al more than you know they-everybody has a new hop variety and you think, where did that come from?

PK: Exactly.

GN: That's sort of like Salmon. It's like, hmm. If you look back far enough. Well, I was always interested in the background of hops. It's sort of like, oh. 01:41:00Tettnang is fuggle but it's grown in Czechoslovakia. It's kind of like, hmm. The other part is varietal identification by hop oil analysis. Everybody has their own theory [laughs], which I find another amusing point.

PK: Do you think that North American varieties are their own species? I know there's debate about that. Al and Peter have mentioned that. They think it's its own species, maybe.

GN: Oh, you mean the native, wild Americans. Well, it's different than anything else.

PK: People haven't quite said it yet, right?

GN: No. Well, it's sort of like whether hops are related to marijuana or 01:42:00nettles. People still argue.

PK: Sure.

PK: Tiah, I feel really. This has been really fun for me, but I want to make sure you get your questions in, too.

TEM: No, I did. I did. You ask good questions.

PK: There's just, I mean, we could probably do another couple hours.

GN: [Laughs].

PK: Look up a lot of these words, Gail. The one word I like is pluckability.

GN: Isn't that nice? [laughs]

PK: Well, do you have any other thoughts? What we generally do with oral histories is record them and do you have a student worker transcribing some of these?

TEM: I will in the fall. I'll have more. They come rushing back in the fall.

PK: But then there's an opportunity when we send it back to you that you can add notes to it, or you know, in case we miss anything?

TEM: Mm-hmm.

PK: Is there anything now that you want to wrap up with, or?

GN: Well, you know, one of the other things is that the correspondence between countries.

PK: Yes. Talk about that.

GN: Was always pretty good, because every time that we have a paper written, they would send it to "peers for review analysis." Well, there's not that many people did it, so you know everybody. Dr. Neve, who was Darby's or whatever his name predecessor, you could always tell his comments. It's sort of like, what are you doing over there? What do you mean storage? [Laughs].

PK: Actually, this is a question I meant to ask, it was that you were really part of a global community and peer review is part of it, but you traveled around, too. Can you talk about traveling, or did you go to Germany? Or where did you-?

GN: I got to go to Strasberg in '94. That was that international hop growers, 01:44:00which I got that at, which I hung up there because it's not usually hanging there. I went to England in 1978 to go to a conference on hop storage, which was very interesting because other people are looking at you like we're nuts, but they finally realized. See, one of the new varieties was released from England was white target way back. It's the worst storing hop in the world. It goes to pot between the field and the dryer, you know? [laughs] But they didn't know it because the analytical method that they used was conductometric. It measures oxidation products as well as alpha acid. They really didn't know how bad it was 01:45:00until they started brewing with it, and then it was coming up with these weird things. I think that was part of that storage conference was that we were doing something different than they were doing.

PK: It sounds like it. You got to meet Neve, I assume, at that conference?

GN: Yes, actually had dinner at his house, which was an old oast.

PK: Is that right?

GN: Yes.

PK: I have heard interesting stories about that man.

GN: Yes. Very interesting. He, I didn't realize, I was trying to remember his name so I looked him up on the internet, I didn't know they had closed White College in 2009.

PK: They did. So it's now...all their records are in London now in Imperial College, but Peter Darby still works at Why [phonetic]Farms, it's just a private company now sponsored by hop growers. It's from England's top industry shrunk so much and they're trying to grow their...

GN: Low trellis.

PK: Low trellis and high aroma, or aroma hops, because they want the English growers, but the English growers want to keep growing what they're growing because that's what the brewers brew. They don't brew IPAs and [inaudible].

GN: Yeah. It's strange.

PK: Because I'm actually really interested in this for my own research, the global aspect, do you, in the records, in Al's yearly records, he mentions correspondence with various places from South Africa to Russia to...

GN: I got to go to South Africa and see their hop research there, which was fascinating.

PK: What year did you do that?

GN: That was in 2001 before September.

PK: Yeah, so but you're trading hop, I guess you call it germ [inaudible]and germ plasm, right?

GN: Well, it was, it's semi-controlled. One you have to have quarantines.

PK: Can you explain that process to me? Because I know that people are trading materials. So you guys are all trading materials throughout the world?

GN: Well, sometimes it's harder to get hops from Oregon to Washington and Washington to Oregon than it is to England or Germany or any other place. But they have to be sent under a quarantine and they have to be isolated from the other hops and grown, I think, it's like three or four years. One of them is to find out that they don't have any diseases that can be transmitted. Of course, they don't always send their best varieties. I mean [laughs].

PK: This yearly exchange. They were doing it all the time and you get inquiries from Mexico and places maybe like South Africa where they were trying to grow hops earlier on.

GN: Well, they have the most, I would call worst growing conditions. I mean, I 01:48:00think the rainfall is alright, maybe, but it looks like it's really clay, dry, very low organic matter. I mean, it really, you get so spoiled in Oregon. You go out in the hop yards and it's like the soil is beautiful. You go up to Washington, it's not so beautiful. You go to Idaho, it's not quite so beautiful. Northern Idaho they have good soil, but I was surprised. Oh, they are supposed to clean the house.

TEM: Here, I'm going to hit stop.