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Midwest Grown, Midwest Brewed
Hops farms are making a comeback in the Heartland — and despite the recent drought and frigid winters, they’re thriving.

By Casey Morgan

 
Brita Nelson owes part of her livelihood to beer nerds. In 2011 the one-time residential service provider, her husband Jason Skarin, and their friend and beer-loving business partner Jono Ruf decided to launch Driftless Edge Farm. Their goal: Dedicate a half-acre of their Decorah, Iowa, farm to growing hops. It was a big decision. You can’t just stick a seed in the ground. Hops — perennial plants with resins and oils that flavor and preserve beer — grow up to 20 feet high when fully mature. Nelson and her crew sunk 90 Black Locust tree trunks in the ground. They strung 420 feet of cable across seven rows. All to make a 16-foot trellis that eventually will hold up living walls of beer’s key ingredient.

“We were aware of the market in Iowa after the hops shortage in 2008,” Nelson said. “The increase in demand and the difficult weather situations really shot prices sky high, and there was a lot of demand for not a lot of product. So we thought it might be a way for us to get into farming.”

There’s so much demand that Driftless Edge Farm has seen growth, even without a fat contract from a large brewery or costly state-of-the-art farming equipment. They’ve done it on the backs of dedicated home brewers, who purchase the Centennial, Cascade and Nugget hops vacuum-sealed and frozen as full flowers to preserve freshness.

And Driftless is not alone. Hops are a hot commodity in America’s breadbasket, pushed by the home brewing trend and the craft beer enthusiasts who bolster the industry. But American hops are largely produced in the Pacific Northwest in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Midwest production is relatively scant by West Coast standards, but it’s still a burgeoning industry. In 2004, the U.S. trailed No. 1 producer Germany in hops production, accounting for just 27 percent of the global harvest. Last year the U.S. outpaced Germany and accounted for over a third of the world’s production, according to Hop Growers of America Statistical Report for 2013.

But while demand and production are up, the high startup costs remain an enormous barrier for young hops farmers looking to get in the field. It definitely wasn’t easy for Driftless. Nelson said the costs, intensive labor and inclement weather all make growth during the first four years difficult. Ideally, Nelson would like to get a contract with a brewery, given the right opportunity, but in order to process the hops for commercial sales, she needs a $20,000 hop pelletizer.

“We don’t have the equipment or really even the desire at this point, so I guess we are kind of limiting ourselves in that way,” Nelson said.

Despite the initial startup costs, hops farming can be a lucrative market — given the right circumstances and the right connections. It’s a young industry in the Midwest, and entrepreneurs are clamoring for a chance to get in on the ground floor. But it’s not as cutthroat as one might think. From farmers and distributors to brewers and their beloved regulars, all facets of the brewing community are working together to create efficiencies and share some of the costs and benefits of cooperation.

Stan Driver, owner-operator of Hoot ‘n’ Holler Hops in Lyndhurst, Va., created the Old Minion Hops Cooperative to help hops farmers share equipment and spread the cost of doing business. It’s now expanded to include hops farmers from Virginia to North Carolina and Tennessee. It’s an appealing business model, given the pricey equipment required for commercial hops production on any scale.

Justen Kelly farms hops at his more than 200-year-old heirloom family farm in Meadowview, Va., Kelly Ridge Farms. Kelly works with Driver on the cooperative and notes the practical benefits of sharing.

“That way you don’t have every mom-and-pop grower having to by a $20,000 hop pelletizer or a $30,000 harvester,” Kelly said. “That’s a lot of capital that we can save if we work together with all our growers and brewers. It benefits everybody.”

Those benefits will spur growth — growth that Midwestern hops farmers would like to see in the future.

“It’s a great opportunity because in anything else you’re trying to start, there’s an established market and you have to compete with people already doing it,” Kelly said. “It’s really an empty market. It does take significant up-front capital to get into it, but once you’re in, you’re pretty well in. It’s really a great market to be in right now.”

Content with her half-acre hops yard for now, Nelson expects to see growth in the Midwest.

“We think it’s a very strong potential crop for expansion in the Midwest. I mean, that’s why we got in to it — out of all the things we could have started,” Nelson said. “And folks in the Midwest, like in Wisconsin, they’re making a really good go of it and really regenerating the local and regional hops production in the region.”

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Photo courtesy of Driftless Edge Farm

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