The practical application of scientific principles to the art of hop agriculture and brewing science
Thought this was the one place you could escape the daily news cycle? Sorry. We look directly at what this could mean for growing and brewing in the near term. There will be impacts to supply, labor, pricing and relationships. Above all we just need to Be Smart and take care of each other.
It’s a question that comes up constantly: “How do I get Brewers to talk to me”? We go through some examples of how to get the conversation rolling, and even more fun, examples of things you can say to get shut down immediately.
Thanks to Chad for asking about seasonal tightening of trellis wire, we get deep into cable loads. This leads into a broader discussion of what else you can be doing during the non-growing season (there is no “off-season”, just a non-growing season). There’s No Relaxing in Hop Growing! For the heavy math involved there are […]
This week we check in with James for a blow-by-blow of his trip to the Nebraska Growers and Brewers Conference, which was in Kearney, not Lincoln. You’ll get the details of the presentations he gave and the reactions; it’s almost like being there (without the 2 hour rides back and forth from the airport). Here’s […]
As a follow up to last week’s talk on pre-emergents, how about a look at cover cropping and companion plants as other ways to keep the weeds at bay? Be sure to check out Instagram to see us meet the challenge of spider mite explosions and we apologize in advance to the wild parsnip growers.
Weeding might be the most frustration, time consuming and expensive aspect of your hop yard. The use of pre-emergents can drastically cut down (pun intended) on the hand work you’ll need to do in-season. This week we’ll dive into the what/when/why/how of proactively getting after your weeds.
Welcome back and Happy New Year! We kick off the year with an uplifting discussion of nitrate poisoning in your hopyard. Then let’s spend some time talking about hop variety trends in brewing, followed by a look at just what happened with Ballast Point’s purchase and impending sale.
Finally! Months ago we asked our listeners to give us their hopyard plans so that we could review them on-air, and here they are. It’s great to hear what people are trying and we chime in with our usual opinions and suggestions.
We’ve mentioned it many times: you need a solid business plan to keep you on task and define who you want to be. In this episode we finally break down exactly what that means and how valuable things like SWOT analyses are as you try to convince others – and yourself – that your dream […]
Jumping off of last week’s show with Mark we go much deeper into the photoperiod discussion and ask the question: while we all know that “light is good” for plants, why does no one ever talk about why “dark is good” too? Then we read some harvest statistics from the last year to try and […]