El Dorado

El Dorado was developed and brought to market by CLS Farms, a hop company in Moxee in the American hop region of the Yakima Valley (Washington). According to the breeder, it began with one acre of an experimental variety, which was tested for several years. In 2010 samples went to the Great American Beer Festival. After that it received its name and went on sale. According to the breeder, the name refers to the legendary city of gold, because of the deep golden-yellow lupulin in the cones.

The exact parentage has not been published. According to co-owner Eric Desmarais, Comet was the grandmother and the grandfather was a wild neomexicanus hop from Colorado. Elsewhere the company calls a male hop from Colorado a great-grandfather instead. The hop merchant Hopsteiner in turn mentions Brewer's Gold, Bullion, Comet and Fuggle in the family tree.

El Dorado® is a brand name. CLS Farms licenses growers, who must follow rules for drying and baling.

Scientific research on El Dorado is scarce. In a study by researchers from the hop merchant Hopsteiner, with 250 hop samples of 97 varieties, it fell in the middle category for 'thiol impact'. Thiols are powerful, fruity sulfur compounds; Citra and Strata fell in the highest category in that same study.

The breeder puts the emphasis on picking time: - harvested early: brighter, citrusy; - halfway: melon, watermelon and pear; - fully ripe: stone fruit, tropical fruit, sour candy and cherry.

According to CLS Farms, the moment of addition also makes a difference. In the kettle, El Dorado gives a clean bitterness with bright citrus, in the whirlpool sweeter citrus. With dry hopping, tropical sour candy, stone fruit, sweet cherry and lemon come forward.

Merchants describe it similarly: tropical fruit, watermelon and stone fruit (Haas), or mango, pear and candied lemon (Hopsteiner). According to Desmarais, brewers used too little of it at first: considerably more El Dorado was needed to really make it pop.

El Dorado is a 'dual purpose' hop: suitable for bitterness and aroma. According to the breeder, it has enough alpha acids to bitter, but CLS Farms grows it as an aroma hop. Merchants give alpha acids of about 12 to 17%, depending on source and harvest.

The variety is available as ordinary pellets and, according to the breeder, also in processed forms from various suppliers, such as Cryo, LupoMAX and Incognito.

The breeder recommends combining El Dorado with Citra, Centennial, Mosaic, Comet, Cashmere or Sabro. BarthHaas mentions IPA, hazy IPA, lager, blond, American pale ale and cream ale as suitable styles.

After the 2010 festival, CLS Farms expanded El Dorado, by its own account, to 27 acres in 2011, about 11 hectares. According to the breeder, the variety was first intended as a bittering hop, but brewers also became interested in the aroma. According to Haas, it then took about another ten years before El Dorado really broke through. In 2025 it stood at 434 acres in Washington, about 175 hectares; the figures for Idaho are not public.

How old the variety is exactly is not entirely clear. Hopsteiner gives 1999 as the year of introduction and Haas writes that it turned up in the late 1990s. The breeder itself uses 2010 for the name and the sales.

A good starting point: an IPA or hazy IPA with El Dorado. Smell for sweet fruit: pear, watermelon, stone fruit or sour candy. Then try it in a blond or pale ale, styles that BarthHaas also mentions.

Keep in mind that, according to the breeder, the aroma depends strongly on picking time. The same variety can therefore turn out differently from beer to beer and from harvest to harvest.