Wisconsin is an agricultural powerhouse, and even our favorite beverages can be traced back to the field… including beer!
Rich Joseph owns Hop Garden Brewing, a taproom located in Paoli and Evansville. He grows seven varieties of on roughly 2 acres, but he has 7.5 acres equipped for growing the crop. He keeps about a quarter of what he grows to make his beer. The bulk of it goes to the Wisconsin Hop Exchange to be used by other breweries. He says about a half dozen Wisconsin breweries are devoted to buying Wisconsin hops.
The hops plant needs to be 18 feet high by July 1. The drought is challenging, but irrigation helps. Joseph says he expects a close to average yield.
Industry Trends
Joseph says when he started the farm in 2013, there was a hop shortage. Hop prices were up to $18 per pound. But with growth in hop farming out West, the prices have dropped to $9 per pound.
Wisconsin has the quality advantage, he explains. Wisconsin Hop Exchange underscores this when it markets Wisconsin hops to breweries across the nation. He says nearly a dozen Wisconsin breweries try to buy all of their hops from Wisconsin growers.
Joseph used to welcome up to 70 people to hop growing seminars at his farm. But today, interest among people to enter the hop business is waning since the price has gone down.
“I probably get a call three to four times a year from someone who wants to start growing hops,” he says.
Growing Hops
The growing season begins in March. Harvest starts in mid-August. The goals is to get the plants to the top of their wires — 18 feet — by July 1.
“We have a couple varieties that will make that for sure, and then some that may not just due to the excessive dry and heat,” Joseph says. “We have everything under drip irrigation but you just can’t beat rain water on your crops to make them grow.”
Aside from water, hops require similar nitrogen needs as corn. Joseph uses a corn starter in the spring and adds nitrogen to the drip irrigation throughout the year. When it comes to weed management, broadleaf sprays will kill hops, so weed prevention requires hand labor.
Labor Requirements
Joseph relies on a good crew at Hop Garden Brewing to put strings up in the spring and harvest in the fall. He needs a full day of eight to nine people for the strings. He needs up to six people for the harvest regime:
- cut the 3,000 hop vines down
- load the vines onto a trailer and bring them to the barn
- hook each vine to the harvester
- harvester knocks off the cones of each vine with rotating ‘fingers’
- put cones into a drier to bring the moisture from 70 percent to 10 percent — takes roughly 24 hours
- bail hops into 100-lbs bales and store in the cooler
- send to the Wisconsin Hop Exchange to be pelletized for breweries
At the time of the interview — mid-June — Joseph says it’s too early to predict yield, but he does expect it to be close to average.
“This drought is going to knock us down probably 10 to 20 percent. The heat is not that great for hops,” he says. “Right now… it’ll be another average harvest. We produced about 3,000 lbs of hops last year, and we should be about that this year because some of the plants are a little older.”
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