Farm to foam
Hops have been grown in Canada since the 19th century, but the
volume of production and the number of types grown gradually
decreased as Canadian brewers embraced the relatively homogeneous,
mass-produced lagers that dominated the market in
the decades after WWII. The rise of craft brewing in the 1990s
caused a bit of a logjam, since the darker beers beloved of craftbeer
drinkers use four to five times as much hops per batch, and
shortages ensued.
Today the Canadian hop industry is on the rise. British
Columbia’s hop-growing industry, which almost disappeared by
the 1990s, is expanding. In Ontario, which only had five hopyards
in 2012, there were 80 by 2016, and counting.
Also contributing to the rebirth of hop farming, not only in
Canada, but in many other parts of the world, is what’s called “hop
creep.” Briner describes this as the condition “where we’re no longer
satisfied with last year’s bitterness.”
For all these reasons, hop farmers have been making a comeback
in Canada. One of the earliest was Chris Sartori of Sartori Hop
Ranch in Columbia Valley, B.C., who started producing in 2009. “A
few of us got really inspired by him,” said Briner. “We developed our
own hopyard in 2013.”
What’s the first step for a brewery interested in growing
its own supply? Don’t even consider it, advises Sam Quinlan of
Harvesters of Organic Hops, who founded Canada’s first certified
organic hop farm in Lillooet, B.C., in 2008. Brewers “should not be
growing. They should be getting to know their farmers, fostering
that relationship and committing to buying great quality hops,” he
said. “Their beers can evolve when they understand what influences
a hop from a farmer’s perspective.”
Chris Warwaruk would beg to differ. He is the co-owner (with
his brother Lawrence Warwaruk) of Farmery Estate Brewing
Company Inc. in Neepawa, Man., which grows hops and barley for
their own production. “We started the hopyard first; we built our
brewery afterwards,” he said.
The first crops allowed the brothers to begin co-brewing with
an Ontario brewery. “When we developed a market enough to justify
a brewery, we already had a hopyard and grain farm to supply
it,” he said. “We picked by hand the first few years, but we tried to
scale up as quickly as possible. We bought a used harvester from
Poland because there’s aren’t really any used harvesters in Canada.
It’s probably obsolete, but for a small farm, it’s perfect. We had to
convert it over to North American power: we harvested more in the
first 10 minutes than we had in the first three years.”
Unlike Quinlan, Warwaruk “would encourage breweries to
grow some and to use local ingredients as much as possible. It
doesn’t make sense to ship stuff around the world. In the regions
where you’re capable of growing the raw ingredients, I think
there’s a case for growing it locally; it helps the local economy and
the environment.”
For those considering it, he recommends starting with “the
hardy ones like the Cascade; it’s a foundation hop. You need to rely
on the varieties that are tried and true in our climate, but that’s not
to say you can’t experiment with the new varieties and the hybrids.
It’s just normal for the consumers to ask for novelties and the
growers to satisfy that need.”
Hop trends
Beer drinkers’ interest in novelty and changing tastes are among
the factors that make certain hops more popular. For instance,
tropical flavours like pineapple are now beginning to trend ahead
of citrussy flavours, to the detriment of the lemony Amarillo variety.
The bigger brewers can afford to contract a year’s supply at a
time, but smaller brewers can get left out when a particular hop
becomes desirable or in short supply.
This can create a domino effect in the market and, consequently,
the price of certain types of hops. Briner explains that in 2018, there
was a shortage of El Dorado, which is a popular substitute for Citra,
so the market moved to varieties with similar characteristics, like
Comet. “A few years ago, there was a worldwide shortage of Saaz hops
out of the Czech Republic, which is your typical Pilsner hop,” he said.
“There’s a New Zealand hop called Riwaka that’s so popular
that it doesn’t ever really leave New Zealand; you’ll never see it
used in large production in North America,” Briner said. (And territory
makes such a difference to hop flavour that growing a New
Zealand hop in North America would likely produce a different
product.) “One of the things we do is work with larger craft breweries
that have overcontracted to purchase their excess supplies and
sell them to smaller breweries,” he said.
An appealingly geeky trend of the past decade has been singlehop
brewing, designed to explore the essential nature of specific
varietals by introducing only one into the various stages of the
beermaking process. For instance, in 2015, Persephone Brewing
Co. in Gibsons, B.C., created their 5.7 per cent alcohol by volume
COV E R F E AT U R E
“I see British Columbia becoming
a known hub of organic hop
production in the next few years.”
– Sam Quinlan, Harvesters of Organic Hops
Photos courtesy of Northwest Hop Farms Inc.
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