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.
We start by digging into the HGA’s data about 2019, which takes us into a conversation around your farm’s cost structure and specifically labor costs. Along the way we get into changes at Lagunitas, James being bitter and we interview Mark from Mountain View Hops again (without him actually being there).
We break down the mechanics of small and large scale harvesters, because if you know *why* it’s done this way it will help you to design the *how* to meet your needs.
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 […]
Today, Tuesday, 2/11, marks one year of podcasting madness from James and I. We’ve learned so much and made a lot of new friends (you!), so to celebrate we are re-posting our first show, “Who is hopnology?”. I think it definitely holds up the test of time. Our message and goals haven’t changed, though […]
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.
Pellet quality issues can impact your Brewer’s process – and therefore your ability to get a second sale. We’ll talk about pellet debris and then get into some trend predictions for the beer market in 2020 (spoiler: we don’t like many of them).