Page 29 - The Valley Table - Summer 2021

hops grown onsite, yielding citrusy grapefruit and tangerine notes. (The brewery’s “alive” fermentation continues after bottling, allowing characteristics to evolve over time.)
“Hops like Cascades grow really well in this region. Growers here yield Cascades even better than what they grow out west,” says Chris Holden, co-founder of the New York Hop Guild. “I always wondered why there weren’t more hop farms in the Hudson Valley. Hops tend to grow extremely well where apple trees thrive.”
According to Holden, German farmers who brought hop expertise to New York prior to the 1900s ultimately migrated to Michigan and Wisconsin, and then onward to California. Blight and mildew decimated crops in New York, and Prohibition finally pushed many hops growers westward, where the flat landscapes and earthy soil were closer to what growers were used to in Germany, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.
“The New York State farm brewery license [which went into effect in 2013] helped kickstart the return to this area,” Holden says. “It’s getting bigger due to the quality that brewers are getting. They are just as good, if not better, than what they’re able to get from out west, Germany, or anywhere else, to the point where some of the hops grown here are even considered the best in the world.”
Currently, the New York Hop Guild sources hops
for many of this region’s prominent brewers, including District 96, Captain Lawrence Brewing Co., Industrial Arts, Newburgh Brewing Company, Mill House Brewing Co., King’s Court, Sloop Brewing Co., and Plan Bee, among others. Many of the farms are based in central New York, just north of the Valley.
Hops are licensed crops, and many newer strains are protected by trademarks. If farmers want to grow popular new varieties like Galaxy — native to Australia — they must purchase the rights. Growers who are unwilling to do so have two options: turn to older strains or begin cultivating their own species.
Many new hop varieties go through an official United States Department of Agriculture breeding process, which can take up to 10 years to complete. It starts with a greenhouse trial, and gradually works up to a one-acre test. Plants are inoculated for downy and powdery mildew and tested against threatening diseases. After a test for yield, brewers get involved to evaluate taste, smell, and other features. Eventually, the variety gets named and pushed out by the university assisting in the research. In New York State, Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences works with Hudson Valley growers and brewers.
In 2021 the New York Hop Guild trademarked its own blend, called Excelsior. “Basically, we took all of our best- growing hops and sent them to HopTechnic,” says Holden. A Washington-based lab, HopTechnic uses state-of-the-art technology to match requested characteristics perfectly, right down to tasting notes. “After about four months of testing, we finally came up with something. It’s really groundbreaking what we can do with this technology,” Holden says.
Stuart Farr, Hudson Valley Hops and Grains
The first thing to know about hops is they’re perennial plants. Planting only happens once in a generation.
— Stuart Farr, Hudson Valley Hops and Grains
PHOTOS: BY B. DOCKTOR PHOTOGRAPHY (TOP); DEREK DELLINGER (BOTTOM)
JUNE – AUG 2021
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Emily and Evan Watson, Plan Bee