The current craft brewing renaissance is helping to spur a local hops growing movement. Brewers are clamoring for local ingredients to make beer, but farmers haven’t grown hops commercially in the eastern United States for nearly a century.
On Friday, July 22, at 7 p.m. in Common House on the Sterling College campus, Laura Ten Eyck and Dietrich Gehring will present “Learning to Grow Hops Commercially in the Northeast—One Farm’s Story” and talk about their work to restore local hop production in the northeast United States. Ten Eyck and Gehring are the owners and operators of Helderberg Hop Farm and Indian Ladder Farmstead Brewery and Cidery. The two have been growing hops and brewing beer at home for more than 25 years and have been working to revive hop production in the northeast. They are co-teaching the School of the New American Farmstead workshop “Growing Hops: Sustainable, Small-Scale Production for Home and Market.”
This talk is free and open to the public, and there will be a book signing of The Hop Grower’s Handbook (Chelsea Green, 2015) afterwards.
The pair will begin their talk by relaying the history of the their multi-generation family farm and reviewing the growth of the craft beer industry and the rising demand for locally grown beer ingredients. An introduction to the unique botany of the hop plant will follow, along with a description of the storied relationship between people and hops first as food, then medicine, and ultimately, as a crucial ingredient in beer making. Ten Eyck and Gehring will explain how today’s modern global hop industry works and will contrast this with the nascent movement to return commercial hop production to the eastern United States. Hearing about the evolution of the authors’ own cultivation—from a single hop plant in the garden to to a two-acre hop yard supporting small-scale commercial beer production—will both expose the challenges encountered by novice hop growers and highlight entrepreneurial solutions and adaptations.
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