HOPS MAKE A COMEBACK
Dutchess County Fair visitors are being told how one local business hopped to growing the ingredient that puts the bitters in beer.
The Dutchess Hops business of Eastern View Garden and Nursery, of Lagrangeville, represents a return to greatness for a vine that fell out of favor when Prohibition was declared nearly 100 years ago. Over the past decade, local growers discovered a niche demand was being created by the growth in popularity of specialty brews.
“Hops are making a comeback into the Hudson Valley,” said Ken Maurer, operations manager for Eastern View garden center.
“Before Prohibition, this used to be the number one hops-growing state,” he said. “Now you find it is big in Oregon and Washington state. There are some places that have done well in New York, a couple places down on Long Island and up near Cooperstown.”
Dutchess Hops is at the fair for the sixth time to provide information about the labor-intensive nature of growing the crop.
“We grow 4.5 acres for six or seven varieties of hops for the craft brewers and home brews,” Maurer said.
“Once you’ve got your roots, they’re perennial,” he said. “But you have to hang string to train them on, you’ve got to start to train them, and it takes two or three guys almost a weekand-a-half just to drop and hang string. When they’re ready to be picked each one of them has got to be cut down, hand-picked, then they’ve got to be dried, then they’ve got to be weighed, and they’ve got to be packaged.”
Maurer noted that humid conditions in the Hudson Valley can harm the quality of a plant’s flower, which is harvested and sold based on taste and the amount of bitters that it brings to the product.
“They put that in their mash as part of their chemistry and they’re boiling it,” he said. “They extract oils
and the alpha acids, which give the bitterness as well as the aroma.”
Maurer said it takes three years for the plant to mature for a harvest, but the vine grows very quickly.
“From the time they break ground to harvest they can get to 25 feet (tall) and (are) known to grow a foot per day,” he said.
“There are thousands of varieties of hops,” Maurer said. “They predominantly bring different amounts of flavors and bitterness and aromas.”
Maurer did note that there are also other, less
profitable, things that can be done with the plant.
“People have made wreaths out of them,” he said. “People used them back in the 20s to make hop pillows, it’s supposedly homeopathic for sleep apnea, and there some other creative things people are doing with them. But for consumables right now, beer is predominantly it.”