One of the first questions that seems to come up after speaking with those interested in growing hops is always one regarding which Hop plants to plant and which ones not to. First, any new grower must determine what the intent of said growing is to be. Is it to grow hops for home brewing? Is it to grow hops for fun or for a project like the Hardywood Community Hopping Project? Or is it to sell to breweries or create a business selling Hops? In order to be successful we need to think very small, no different than our starts in the Spring as shown below and then as we develop full growing regimens begin to think bigger and bigger as the years move forward.
Obviously, if your intent is to create a business than you will most likely be or should be planting a substantial field/yard. This will require the greatest commitment - both in time and expense and certainly a grower will want to grow what appears most acceptable. The question remains who is the authority to determine which Hops are acceptable and which are not. It is not as simple, nor should it be, to assume which Hops can grow and which cannot without first experimenting with said Hop and learning very factually if it will indeed not grow in your region. Every Hop is different, just like every region and even some regions within regions. Just because North Carolina or New York did not have success with a certain Hop should in no way deter growers from experimenting with those hops on a limited scale and find out if that data applies to their region.
Too many people are putting new growers in a box and telling them "what" to grow and less about "how" to grow. When we started, we started like everyone else growing Cascade because we were told it was the only one that would grow here in our State. The basis of this of course was that someone had come before us and planted Cascade successfully. Hop fields like the one at Blue Mountain Brewing produce Cascade for its acclaimed Full Nelson beer. We scowered the resources trying to find all the information we could, but inevitable we learned that a lot of the information really was not as pertinent to our region as we thought. growing in Oregon, Washington, Michigan etc is very different than Virginia or even North Carolina. Once we applied things and or modified and created new means, we learned that we could grow Cascade. We then decided it was important to learn if other Hops would grow alongside the Cascade. After all, what if we wanted to brew with a hops other than Cascade? We moved on to Nugget, which was a huge success. Our Nugget yielded us more than the Cascade and subsequently we have moved on to other Hops over the last four years or so. Experimenting with them in pots, in rows and working with other growers from other regions in learning how each one is very different and yet similar in a lot of ways as well.
I am a true believer in the notion that you can grow a lot more Hops than growers have thus far. One of the best things that demonstrated this was the Hardywood Community Hopping Project where Hardywood Park Craft Brewery provided three rhizomes free of charge to those in the beer community who would be willing to grow the Hops and then donate the whole cone hops for the project to brew the Hardywood RVA/IPA release in September. The goal would be to harvest the hops and deliver them to Harvest Day where upon gathering all the hops, Hardywood would add them to the boil for the release. The RVA/IPA has been 100% Virginia Hops and has released the last two years. Each year the number of growers and participants has expanded. Through this project, many learned that Columbus (CTZ) could successfully grow in the region as well.
The Project has spurned a lot of interest in Hops. It can be attributed to the beginnings of a lot of the current growers that are producing the larger harvest throughout the region. If Hardywood had not provided the Columbus in 2012, would we be growing CTZ on a larger scale in 2014? Probably not. It takes growers that are willing to experiment and grow Hops while thinking out of the box in order to continue to expand Hop growing here in Virginia. We cannot simply just think Cascade or Nugget because we know it will grow but while growing those we must also seek to grow other varieties as well that are in demand by the brewing community.
If you are a grower who simply wants to enjoy growing and use your Hops in your own home brews than the best thing you can do is determine which Hops you like to work with in your beers and go from there. As long as they are not "proprietary" hops like Simcoe, Summit, Citra, Amarillo than you should be able to locate plant material in order to plant some Hops for your own use. The "proprietary" hops are only grown at registered farms and are very limited in production, which is why they command a higher price per ounce/pound often times at retailers and suppliers. You should not be deterred by what others are saying about "what will or will not" grow as you are likely growing at a much smaller scale and can experiment with a few plants in the beginning. Who knows, you could end up discovering another Columbus!
For the larger scale growers, there is obviously reservations over planting Hop varieties that others have not demonstrated success. This is normal, however it is not unusual for commercial growers to grow various varieties and though many of these have been in families for generations at some point someone had to decide to plant new varieties. Brewers are looking to source local hops, but they also will want more than just Cascade even if it is for special smaller runs of a particular release. If a brewer is interested in a particular Hop and approaches a grower about planting it, the grower should research the hop chemistry to learn if it closely resembles through breeding hops that have been successful in the region or analyze its growing requirements and see if they can be met effectively. I believe if a brewer is interested, it is worth the risk to plant some of the variety and work with it and learn by growing and not by simply reading what others say about their experiences.
I always like to talk to people about the great research being done down in North Carolina. North Carolina has two research yards where they have been examining the growing regimens of Hops now for a few years. They are a wonderful resource of valuable growing and cost analysis for anyone interested in growing. However, I like to point that the two yards are quite different in geography as well as results within the same State. Lake Wheeler and Mills River research yards as part of the North Carolina Research Hop Project demonstrate how hops can vary in yield and production even within the same geographic area. Soil differences and climate conditions like annual precipitation play large roles in factoring how Hops will perform. We must also consider that these are but one or two experiences and any number of factors could have influenced the data and are meant to provide information to begin the discussion not end the discussion. The research being undertaken in invaluable to all growers and I urge any one intending on growing to attend workshops, field tours and if possible contribute to the research through donation.
We have proven that the following Hop plants can be grown from both rhizome and/or field starts here in Virginia: (yields at harvest)
Cascade
Nugget
Columbus (CTZ) aka Zeus
Chinook
Sterling
Centennial- limited low success rates
Galena
Willamette
Maryland and North Carolina growers may find they have higher yields and success rates with other varieties, which is all the more reason to collaborate with those growers and learn from their experiences as well.
We have about a dozen experimental hops we are working with and are not confident as yet until after 2014 to render opinion as to whether they are ready to be moved into the group above. We also have some new plants for the first time that will be grown, mostly in pots the first year, but we are excited about working with some of these because we believe our brewing community will support us in planting full rows if we can have some success with them the next two years.
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