After hop-picking, revisited

Meet the new video. Same as the old video.

Not quite ... New intro, new ending, new cover shot here and there in this re-cut of the Weyerbacher hops saga. The director's cut, ha!

It’s basically an updated version, with footage from their Aug. 23rd harvest day and a quick interview with Dan Weirback as he snipped bines and flung them into the bed of a pickup.

Shots of the young hop bines in the original cut have been replaced; likewise most of the shots of mature hop cones in the original intro – which came from footage of our plants – have been replaced with those from Dan and Sue's hop yard.

There’s also some additional comment from the Rutgers agriculture folks, John Grande and Ed Dager, who have our enduring gratitude for helping out with the piece. The Snyder Farm did its hops project several years ago, and no longer has them growing there in Pittstown in Hunterdon County. But it’s great to see the farm's research get put to new use and great that John and Ed were willing to revisit it.

Anyway, grab a hoppy beer, an IPA, and watch.

UPDATE: Upon checking Weyerbacher's Web site, we learn that Dan says the harvest yielded enough hops to brew three batches of the Harvest Ale, an IPA (6% ABV); it will be available in bottles, starting this Saturday (Sept. 13th). Alas, it's only available in Pennsylvania.

Back to school

Rutgers’ fall semester starts Sept. 2nd, and for Harvest Moon, that means more people stepping off the sidewalks of George Street to settle in for a pint or two at the New Brunswick brewery café.

We stopped by midweek last week (yep, more Jersey beer traveling, with more to come) and talked to head brewer Matt McCord to see what’ll be coming on tap when the Moon gets full with larger crowds.

Think of it as a fall schedule, what glasses you can take. (OK, we’ll leave the bad puns and word play to the would-be Ogden Nashes of the world.)

We’re talking fall here, so naturally Oktoberfest is in the mix, a traditional take on the fest lager with some dark Munich malt and some Vienna. Look for it in late September. It’s worth mentioning that Harvest Moon does go lager with their Oktoberfest. Not all breweries or brewpubs do, since it can mean tying up tank space they just don’t have to let the beer sit and chill for those lager durations. Ones that don't go alt instead.

Pumpkin pie
Also this fall, look for two versions of Harvest Moon's pumpkin ale, with allspice, cinnamon and brown sugar (among other flavorings). Matt says he and backup brewer Kyle McDonald (pictured below) will do two regular takes on the seasonal, plus a high-gravity version.

Last year, the Moon’s imperial pumpkin ale had vanilla beans in it to create a graham cracker crust signature. All three will have the vanilla this year, Matt says.

Deeper into the fall term, Matt has plans for a winter imperial stout and winter warmer. Too bad winter isn't now. Matt also says the schwarzbier, a personal favorite for us, should be coming back around, too. He didn't brew it this past spring, just didn't get it into the mix. So there's something to look forward to.

And speaking of Kyle, the new (but not so new by now) guy on the block, he worked at a brewery in his home state of Iowa before pulling up stakes for New Jersey around the start of 2008, after his girlfriend took a job in the Garden State. Kyle may be the backup, but Matt refers to him as one of Harvest Moon’s brewers, like himself.

Matt brewed solo for about half the six years he’s been at Harvest Moon, and he lives in South Jersey, a fair distance to travel to work. So naturally, he’s glad for the extra hands.

Matt's a guy who respects beer and likes to talk beer – take a look at his extensive beer list on the Moon's Web site; it's pretty impressive, no question. He knows the kind of hard work it takes to always have six to eight house beers flowing (featuring Belgian and wheat brews in that mix) when there's just you and one extra person, plus not a whole lot of floor space available for your brewery. (HM’s brewhouse sits in an elevated spot to the right just as you walk in the entrance from George Street; the fermenters and serving tanks are downstairs; some of the equipment is kinda shoehorned it, but not all. Still, it's not exactly a wide open arrangement.)

Campus life
And what of the Rutgers crowd (notice the big red R on the doors)? Matt says they tend to favor bigger beers. It’s a study of economics, since money can be tight for the college crowd. The equation kinda works out as 1 pint of a bigger beer at $4.50 = satisfaction and savings vs. 2 pints of a lighter style for the same per-pint price. Pretty simple math.

That formula makes Hops2 Double IPA, one of Harvest Moon’s signature beers, in demand with the Rutgers crowd, but it's also popular among women beer drinkers. Hops2 (that’s 2 as in squared) gives you a lesson on hops and bigger beers, but it also mellows somewhat toward the bottom of the glass, and calls on you to answer the question, “Having another?”

It was one of our growler beers – we also took home their kölschbier – so why not? And the kölsch, well it's taken over for the MoonLight Ale on the beer board, to satisfy the session beer end of the scale and lighten the mood. It also fits in with Matt's taste for kölsch beers.

Lastly, also, a quick shout-out to the guys having a school reunion at the bar ... St. John's Prep, was it? Hope the fourth you were expecting in your party made it.

Dates of note
Sept. 1: Rutgers takes on Fresno State in its home opener (4 p.m). The Moon sounds good for pregame or post-game wrap-up, if you ask us.
Sept. 9: The New Jersey Young Professionals group holds a brewery tour and tasting at Harvest Moon. Details here ... tickets here.

Hops Project (Update)

Some progress to note with Weyerbacher Brewing’s hop yard …

Owner Dan Weirback tells us they’ve got plenty of well-formed cones on the bines and he’s estimating a total yield of more than 500 pounds, maybe even double that. (By the way, that's an upwardly revised estimate from a couple of months ago.)

Looks like harvest time for the mix of Nugget and Cascades is around the third week of August. And if you recall, Dan’s plan is to brew an ale themed to the project, using the hops still “wet,” not dried, as is the traditional form. That’ll happen fairly soon after the hops are picked.

A ready-to-go brew speaks to the horticultural question of what do you do when you’re primarily an end user of hops, not a producer, and not set up to process and protectively store the hops so they don’t oxidize and become more worthy of mulch than beer.

We’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of the hop project since we first learned about it from the Rutgers agriculture folks, whose hop-growing research done at the Snyder Farm in Hunterdon County from several years ago was supplied to Dan and his wife, Sue.

So we can’t wait to taste that beer.

Meanwhile, our own Centennial hops (pictured above) will get picked this weekend.

The Hop Project (Update)

Over the weekend we checked in with the folks at Weyerbacher Brewing in Easton, Pa., just over the Delaware River from Phillipsburg.

If you recall, Dan Weirback and his wife, Suzanne, undertook the daunting project of growing hops to perhaps offset some of the cost at the brewery Dan founded in 1995. You may also recall hops on the commercial market now cost about four times as much as they did a year ago.

So back in April, after some cajoling by Sue (the project was her idea, Dan admits to harboring a few reservations), some Web research and some outreach to folks versed in hops, the Weirbacks put 1,500 rhizomes in the ground on an acre surrounded by wheat fields in the rolling hills of Lehigh County, Pa. They hired a fencing company to seat rows of poles 9 feet high, upon which they strung trellises for the hop bines to climb. Along the rows, at the base of the hops, they ran hoses for a drip irrigation system.

The Jersey angle – after all, this is a Jersey beer blog – is that they’ve relied on research Rutgers agronomists conducted on hops in the 1990s at a demonstrator hopyard at the Snyder Research Farm in Hunterdon County. The Weirbacks continue to stay in touch with their Rutgers contact, John Grande.

Cost for their project: $8,000 and a lot of physical labor – weeding, mulching and training the bines to climb, more weeding, more training, checking for pests etc. It’s quite a bit of work for two people who otherwise have plenty to do in the course of running a brewery and, in Sue’s case, her own career.

There are no shortcuts to the work. And there’s a fair amount of having to make do with limited resources, such as the poles supporting the trellis lines. At 9 feet, they could easily be twice that height, since hop bines are prodigious climbers. But 9 feet was the tallest the fence company could handle; plus there’s the need to reach the bines, most likely from the bed of a pickup truck.

The payoff thus far? Part of the hopyard is going strong, while the other portion has some catch-up to do. But the Weirbacks’ mix of Cascade and Nugget plants are starting to bud. Barring calamity of bad weather, Japanese beetles or some other hop-hungry insect, the Weirbacks expect to harvest plenty of cones later this summer.

It's worth mentioning that Dan and Sue are under no illusions with the project. After all they’re living it, and even confess to some moments of doubt about the merits of the endeavor. But as they say, they haven’t had those misgivings at the same time, so they’ve been able to soldier on.

And while they haven’t really talked up the project, the Weirbacks have drawn some curiosity from other Pennsylvania brewers interested in seeing what the couple comes up with at harvest.

From all sides, this is a rather bold experiment, commendable, too, when you consider it’s risky, and the Weirbacks are willing to try to cut a trail in the wilderness, so to speak.

Good luck, see you at harvest time.

Hopping on hops, Part 2

Here’s an update on Weyerbacher’s hop-growing efforts in Easton, Pa.

Owner Dan Weirback says the 500 Nugget and 1,000 Cascade rhizomes they set out on an acre of land are indeed part of the brewery’s long-range thinking to address the current hop shortage. By the by, the pictured hop cone was cribbed from Wikipedia's entry.

Weyerbacher is one of those breweries that works in hops (and malts) like painters work in oils, achieving textures, tones and overall complexity. Some examples: Simcoe Double IPA, Eleven Triple IPA, Hops Infusion IPA. When you pump up beers like they do, hops gain some added importance.

Planted two weeks ago, Weyerbacher’s hops so far are taking root, and the brewery is using a drip irrigation method recommended by Rutgers University. The Nuggets (a bittering hop) are leading the way over the Cascades (all-purpose hop), and Dan estimates a combined yield this fall of about 100 to 500 pounds for use in a new, special pale ale or IPA.

The brewery will have to settle for a harvest by hand, something agriculture folks see as less than ideal. But enough volunteers and friends have committed to help, and Dan’s confident the job can get tackled over perhaps a weekend.

These first-season hops will get used “wet,” meaning the traditional drying process will be skipped. Some brewpubs and breweries, Dan says, have been experimenting with hops right off the vine, and have noted a fresher flavor in the brews.

In two or three years however, Dans says, the brewery will probably look to get its hands on some drying equipment. (The Rutgers research farm that grew hops in its demonstrations used an old tobacco dryer.) By then, Weyerbacher’s crop yield could be 2,000 pounds. That may sound like a big number, but Dan thinks it's quite manageable for the brewery.

So how far can Weyerbacher take this idea? Well, they have 15 acres available for planting, and Dan estimates five acres could supply the brewery.

But they may just be content at having the flexibility to help offset hop-supply needs, especially in unfavorable market times.

Exactly how long the current shortage and ensuing price spike will last is anyone’s guess. “It could be a two-year blip, but it could also be five years,” Dan says.

China, Russia and India are all now producing more beer than ever before, he says. Stir that in with the recent bad harvest, acreage taken out of production and trend for hoppier beers and you get an idea of the ripples affecting the supply picture.

The good news for brewers is that Pacific Northwest growers increased acreage this spring by 25 percent.

Still, though we like Weyerbacher's ounce of prevention, and hope they can reap many pounds of cure.

Hopping on the hop bandwagon

Hops are growing in Ocean County. Even at this very moment.

In fact that’s them to the left, getting a good start after their early-April planting. Probably in another week, since hops grow rapidly, it may be time to get a trellis going and start coaching the bines to climb it.

This set is the more robust of four plantings we did of Centennial, a bittering hop that takes quite well to most growing areas, including the flowerbed on the side of our house. It’s good for American pale ales and American renditions of IPA (like Stone IPA), and is similar to Cascade, Chinook and Columbus.

With hop growing on our minds and the worldwide hop shortage – and the subsequent price spike – we surmised that New Jersey would be fertile ground for commercially growing hops.

After all, New Jersey falls within a hop-friendly latitude and still lays some claim to the title “Garden State.” Never mind that subdivision coming soon to fallow land near you. (For the record, we are told that hops were once widely grown in New York state, around the early 1900s, but apparently not in New Jersey.)

So we put the hop-prospects question to the agriculture folks at Rutgers University. What we got was an answer that was part recent history and part economics, something that was not entirely yes or no.

First, hops, as a farm commodity, do look attractive right now, as any crop does when it’s fetching top dollar in the marketplace.

And if you recall, hop prices have shot up lately (so has the price of your beer), thanks to some recent bad harvests and lost acreage. Meanwhile, the popular-of-late extreme beer category has further boosted demand for hops. That super-duper, triple-double IPA ultra hop bomb you told your buddy is the best beer you ever poured probably used more hops to make than all the homebrewed beers in New Jersey combined.

But hyperbole aside, higher demand plus tighter supply equals sharply higher prices, something that puts smiles on farmers’ faces. So, yeah, hops are kind of lucrative at the moment. And New Jersey still has farmers, and RU did some hop growing demonstrations in the mid- to late-1990s at a research farm in Hunterdon County, planting Willamette, Nugget, Cascade, Perle and Chinook varieties.

RU sent some of their hops to a Pacific Northwest lab for testing to determine the alpha acid/bittering strengths, critical information any brewer needs.

What RU learned was that the bittering potential of the Jersey hops generally fell within the preferred range of hops from Washington State’s Yakima Valley, where over three-fourths of U.S. hops are grown. (Some of the high alpha hops, like Chinook and Nugget were slightly below their Yakima cousins, but not much. Chinook, by the way, used to be the bitttering hop in Flying Fish’s brews but has since been replaced.) Also, the Jersey hops didn't fall victim to pests that couldn't be handled.

RU’s efforts came just after New Jersey finally entered the craft brewing era. The Ship Inn brewpub, the British ales specialists in Milford in Hunterdon County and a front-runner in the Jersey pub brewing movement, served beer it made with the Garden State hops at dinner for folks involved in the project and a local legislator, Assemblywoman Connie Myers.

(FYI: Myers sponsored legislation that would have provided incentives for producing hops, so long as they were used by microbreweries in New Jersey. The bill never cleared committee, another reason to frown about craft beer's status in this state. Myers, by the way, gave up her Assembly seat in 2005.)

To underscore that growing hops around here isn’t a far-flung idea, RU folks mentioned that Weyerbacher Brewing in Easton, Pa., just across the Delaware River from Phillipsburg, planted an acre of hops a couple of weeks ago. Dan Weirback, the man behind such Weyerbacher brews as Double Simcoe IPA, Blithering Idiot (barley wine) and Black Hole (porter-stout) wasn’t immediately available to elaborate on the scope of their efforts. (We still hope to find out from him.)

So given RU's past work and current market conditions, things look favorable for Jersey fresh hops, right?

Sort of. But here’s where things become the bitter truth, so to speak.

While easy to grow, RU folks say, hops are expensive to harvest. Unlike some kinds of produce, they’re a crop you can’t efficiently harvest by hand. As RU’s John Grande, a fellow with PhD in horticulture tells us, it would be like trying to harvest corn one kernel at a time.

The vines are easy to cut down, but getting all the lupulin-packed cones is another matter, and for that farmers would need to mechanize. But the equipment needed for that job is pricey enough to cut deeply into profit potential, if not sour the deal outright.

Sigh.

But, remember RU’s answer wasn’t an outright "no," either.

There’s always the farmer’s old standby, the co-op, like-minded agriculturalists pooling resources so the overhead gets spread around and the price of that expensive harvesting and drying equipment (hops are generally dried somewhat before they’re used in brewing) isn’t coming out of one pocket. So there's some hope, if you're championing the idea of New Jersey becoming a player in the hop field.

But realistically, what’s the wind-up for Jersey hops? It’s like any new business venture: develop a sound game plan front to back and hope you’re in the right market at the right time.

Who knows, though, maybe Weyerbacher is smart to hop on hops. Maybe now is the right time.