This is an article in Popular Mechanics about craft beers accounting for 7% of beer sales in the United States but gobbling up 52% of domestic hops production. That sounds impossible on the surface, but if true then that right there should tell you industrial production is seriously holding back on flavor. The author assumes you know the acronym IPA stands for India Pale Ale and that the term has almost nothing to do with India and not necessarily pale, and definitions for the term that you'll find assume that makes perfect sense.
Popular Mechanics.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/skills/auto-home-improvement-diy/the-future-of-hops-futures-16561697?click=main_sr
The article discusses hops futures.
Turns out, hops are easy to grow. There are several varieties. Hops are grown all over the United States. Presently mostly in Pacific Northwest. There is no good solid reason for shortage. You can grow it yourself. The plant begins as a rhizome and sends up several fingers forming a bush. When cut back a vine results from one of the fingers that twines clockwise, always clockwise, around a chord and can reach twenty feet tall. The tight flowers form papery cones that are harvested at just the right time, dried and used to flavor beer. I watched some twenty or so videos. They all have their faults. This is the best one I've seen. It is 29 minutes long but you can skip through without missing too much. A few regular blokes discussing their home production.
I was interested in Colorado hops. All of those videos are geared more toward larger farms and industry, farmers working in conjunction with local beer brewers. We see long rows of exceedingly tall vines, and these vines gathered in various ways, and the cones removed by various means, including a small girl plucking them into her play bucket. There are videos for almost any state that you enter, I saw Washington, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, and Colorado, and Australia, but the accents drove me off.
This man admits in a later video that these rhizomes he is planting here failed. He is just showing us what to expect and how it can be done. He is too late in the season and his heart is not really into it. Besides, he has his older plants that are already producing. Thank you, Guy, for showing us the beginning.
12 comments:
Mike Rowe did a dirty jobs about hops.
They don't use hope in pancakes, you know. Even at Ihop.
I think the guy who wrote that Popular Mechanics article -- oops, I mean re-wrote some press release -- used to be one of those guys back in the 90s who told us that there are tremendous business opportunities to be had in emu farming.
There's long been something that has bugged me about the "craft" brewing business. And it's not just that they could just as easily call it "small-time" because there's absolutely nothing that stops AB InBev from making a beer as good as, say, HopDevil.
What bugs me is, broadly speaking, American craft brewers sell a premium product as if it's not. Compare the way Belgian Trappist beer (almost all European beer for that matter) is packaged and marketed with mook-targeted, vulgar-sounding American products with names like "Moose Drool" and "Alimony Ale" and "Baby Maker."
But I forget myself, and this is the internet, so here is a list.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know, there I go again trying to tell somebody their business who never asked for my worthless opinion.
It's as if I were griping pointlessly about "low-information" voters, or something.
I am actually not a big fan of a beer with too much hops.
The PM article referred to domestic hops supply, not production, so I'm guessing that craft beers use 52% of the domestic hops offered for sale.
What's the diff? Well, Budweiser, e.g., owns its own hops farms. Don't know how much, if any, it buys on the open market. Dunno about Miller.
Also, Budweiser (easy to find info about it) uses a lot of German hops, which tend to be less bitter than other varieties. So independent US hops production is a much likelier source for US craft brewers.
I am actually not a big fan of a beer with too much hops.
Same here. There's a definite "craft beer" trend nowadays to go balls-to-the-wall on hops.
Fine. If that's what guys want (it's always guys, right?), then fine. But I suspect it springs from the same follow-fashion-monkey impulse that gives life to 5-alarm wings and wearing basketball shorts in the dead of winter.
"What? This XYZ beer I'm drinking is too bitter for you? Dude! I love hops!"
Alcohol content too. Doubles, triples, quadruples, and Imperials abound. Again, fine.
But there's something amiss when Beer Advocate defines a "session" beer as one having an abv of 5% or less. By that definition, Budweiser is a "session" beer.
I don't think so.
I match the beer to the meal much like you would do with wines.
Most cultures that have spicy food have an excellent larger that goes perfect with a hot meal.
The Chinese have Tsingtao.
The Thai have Singa.
The Mexicans have Dos Equis larger. I would not drink Corona because the lime would overwhelm the flavor.
Cultures with a hardier savory food style favor bigger beers. And of course some beers are best taken alone.
Guinness is a meal in a glass.
When I was bouncing around I favored ales or darker beers.
Guiness of course.
Also several English brews including Bass, Samuel Smiths, John Courage and to mix it up Boddingtons.
My all time favorite and beer of choice is of course Newcastle Nut Brown Ale. Simply the best in my humble opinion.
I ordered two hop rhizomes from a home brew place. I followed the directions and timing and got one two-inch sprout that hung around for two years and never got bigger.
Around here I like Oatmeal Stout or Gaelic Porter from Highlands Brewery in Asheville, NC. Not too much hops there, just the right amount.
Word has it that Obama has bought a place in Asheville.
I'm a fan of darker beers too. Guinness is the standard, but I personally like Murphys better. Köstritzer Schwarzbier is great too (first had that in Wittenberg a few years ago).
Not a lot of craft darks, but McMenamins has Terminator stout, which is good. There are some others out there, I'm giddy when I find them.
Lost Coast's Downtown Brown is a great find.
I'm not a fan of IPAs. I'll drink them, heck I'll drink almost anything (pure genetics, as I hate the feeling of being buzzed or drunk), but I won't usually order one.
(1) Your government in action, No. 544,346,932,119:
Back in the day, Victory HopDevil bottle labels used to have a little story on them explaining the origin of the name. Something about Belgian farmers having a folk legend about a devil that lived in the woods. I thought it was kind of cute.
Anyway, some government agency, maybe it was the FDA, sent some kind of violation notice saying the company can't claim the beer is from Belgium if it isn't. So they took the little story off the label. Makes sense. Why fight a losing battle? So what if the government is stupid? It's strong. And might makes right, after all.
(2) Victory makes a fantastic witbier named "Whirlwind." The label used to look like this. I thought the graphic was awesome.
But recently, it's been changed to look like this. Which kind of sucks, IMHO.
Why the change? Well, I don't know for sure, but the smart money is on some government agency serving a violation notice that the beer is being unlawfully marketed to children.
Why fight it?
Anyway . . . I'm not sure the threat came from a government agency.
Could have been an angry mother, as if there's a difference.
Hops need cool afternoons and sun and water. The pacific nw is optimum but it is easier to grow hops than wine and you can expect a big boom followed by a bust from over production
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