Planting the Hops!
by Jim Vondracek on 04/03/11
One of the key ingredients in most beers is hops - they provide bitterness and balance to the sweetness of the malt. In many beers, like pale ales, they provide an interesting aroma and flavor, too. I've decided to try growing my own hops this year and planted five hills yesterday.
I've planted two different varieties of hops. Three of the hills are Cascades, the stereotypical American pale ale hop, popularized by Sierra Nevada among others. Cascades are characterized by a citrus or even grapefruit flavor and aroma. The other two hills are Willamette, an American hybrid of the English Fuggles hop, used more commonly for aroma or finishing, more delicate in flavor and aroma than the Cascades and can be used in English ales.
Hops are grown from rhizomes, which look like sticks with buds coming out of one end and roots the other. You plant them vertically, with lots of good composted soil, and the bines appear sometime after the soil temperature stays above 40 degrees. Hops grow tall and need to be trained on a trellis or twine, which is what we will be doing, up the side of the house. They are perennials, with limited production of cones the first year, and increasing yield in following years.
I bought my hops from Glen Fuller at Rising Sun Farms, an organic hop farm in Colorado. Glen and I have become internet friends, I've used his Cascade hops in my beers. You can check out Glen and his operation at http://www.coloradoorganichops.com/
Organic hop growers like Glen have been at an extreme disadvantage until recently. The FDA had previously ruled that commercial brewers could label and market their beer as 'organic' without using certified organic hops. Thus there was little incentive for hop growers to grow using organic methods, or for organic farmers to get into the hop growing business. Many of the hops available for hobby brewers were from New Zealand and Europe. Now, the FDA has changed this rule - beer labeled organic must use organically-grown hops - and I hope it assists hop farmers like Glen in building their business.
