British Columbia

The article does a clumsy job of explaining that different yeasts impart different flavours in beer, thus the random mentions of hops are because a novel yeast strain can achieve a beverage that has a neat taste without relying on imported hops (frequently from Washington).

Fun fact: a beer brewed without hops is not beer. It is called gruit (which is also the name of the bittering mix brewers used to use before hops became standard). And much like the champagne joke, a beer brewed by a homebrewer without using hops isn’t called beer, it’s called sparkling disappointment.