If you’ve played Stardew Valley for long you’ve surely found your way into brewing! Brewing drinks is a great way to make money and gain experience. If you’ve grown tired of juice, beer and wine it might be time to move on to pale ale! Pale ale is an alcoholic drink liked by most of the residents in Pelican Town and is known for its strong flavor and light color. But before you get pale ale, you need hops!
What are Hops?
Hops are a green flower that grows during the summer. Hops are known for their bitter taste and are used to flavor and stabilize alcohol. In Stardew Valley, hops are a great investment for a crop because you can harvest it frequently and they can be very profitable! Hops also give you great experience for growing and harvesting, meaning you can get to higher farming levels faster. This will give you access to more crafting recipes and let you pick more specific professions, which can give you higher selling prices or faster animal friendship depending on your choices!
How to Grow Hops?
Hops grow from a starter, like grapes. You can buy hops starter from multiple places including Pierre’s General Store for 60g, Jojamart for 75g, the traveling cart for 100-1000g or the night market on the 16th of Winter for 60g. You can also make a starter by putting hops into a seed maker. Once you have a hops starter you can simply place it onto your farm like any other crop. It takes 11 days to reach the first harvest, but after that it’s ready for harvest every day!
| Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | Ready for Harvest! |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
| 1 day | 1 day | 2 days | 3 days | 4 days | Total: 11 days |
If you’re looking for faster growth, try one of the three Speed-Gro fertilizer! The general Speed-Gro fertilizer increases the growth speed by 10% and the hops will be ready for harvest 2 days earlier! The Deluxe Speed-Gro fertilizer speeds the growth up by 25% and will have your hops ready for harvest 3 days earlier than usual. Hyper Speed-Gro fertilizer speeds the process by 33% and removes 4 days from the usual growth process.
Selling Prices
While most people use their hops to make pale ale you can sell it on its own! Here are the selling prices for Hops:
| Quality | Base | Tiller Profession |
Base  | 25g  | 27g |
Silver  | 31g | 34g |
Gold  | 37g | 40g |
Iridium  | 50g | 55g |
But if you’re looking for a higher earning, you should definitely invest in pale ale production. Which I’ll go through next!
How to Make Pale Ale?
Pale ale is an artisan good made with a keg. It takes 1-2 days but it noted as having one of the highest return on investment in the game! You can also put in in a cask to raise the selling price by raising the quality, but you’ll get a profit either way. The best way to make money with artisan goods and alcoholic beverages in general in the game is to have lots of kegs running in a cycle. Most players find that placing the kegs in farm buildings like sheds or in the farmhouse basement are the best use of space. In order to get a keg in the first place, there are a couple different methods. You can get the crafting recipe at the 8th farming level. Kegs can be crafted with 30 wood, 1 copper bar, 1 iron bar and 1 oak resin. You can also get a keg by completing the artisan bundle in the community center!
Here is a chart of selling prices for pale ale:
(table)
| Quality | Base | Artisan Profession |
Base  | 300g | 420g |
| Silver | 375g | 525g |
| Gold | 450g | 630g |
| Iridium | 600g | 840g |
Look at that price increase! Definitely a worthy endeavor.
Gifting
Giving gifts to villagers is one of the core elements of Stardew! Hops may be pretty flowers, but most villagers don’t love them as gifts.
(table)
| Reaction | Villagers |
| Neural | Abigail , Alex , Caroline , Clint , Demetrius , Dwarf , Elliott , Emily  , Evelyn , George , Gus , Haley , Harvey , Jas , Jodi , Kent , Krobus  , Leah , Lewis , Linus , Marnie , Maru , Pam , Pierre , Robin  , Sam , Sandy , Sebastian , Shane , Vincent , Willy , Wizard |
| Dislikes | Leo , Penny |
The same cannot be said for pale ale, which can be a great gift for multiple villagers!
| Reaction | Villagers |
| Loves | Pam |
| Likes | Abigail, Alex, Caroline, Clint, Demetrius, Dwarf, Elliott , Emily, Evelyn, George, Gus, Haley, Harvey, Jodi , Kent, Krobus, Leah, Lewis, Linus, Marni, Maru, Pierre , Robin, Sam, Sandy, Shane, Willy, Wizard |
| Hates | Jas, Leo, Penny, Sebastian, Vincent |
Tailoring
Hops can be used in clothes making as well! When put in the spool of the sewing machine with cloth, it can be used to make a dyable shirt and belt. When put in the sewing machine with dyable clothes it can be used as green dye, as well as in the dye pots in Emily and Haley’s house.
Bundles
Hops is used in one of the community center bundles if you’re using the remixed bundles, which switch around what you need to finish the community center, if you’ve started getting bored with the regular community bundles. 5 hops are needed in the wild medicine bundle in the remixed pantry, along with 5 purple mushrooms, 5 fiddlehead ferns and 5 white algae. Completing that bundle will get you a cookout kit, that allows you to cook outside of the kitchen!
