Hops in Virginia: Training and Tours

Friday was a very long, but fun day. Steve and I left the office at 5:30 in the morning to head up to Lovingston, VA for the Hops in Virginia inservice training. When we arrived we spent the morning learning about basic hops production, marketing systems, current industry status, and outlook. We were also informed of VCE resources and research on hops production, hops analysis, case studies, and participated in question and answer sessions by specialists, including entomologists from VT.

While at this inservice, I learned that hops are the flowers or seed cones of the hops plant. Hops are used in beer production as flavoring, and provide the taste people look for in beer. If you have never seen a hops yard, it is quite the site to see. Hops are perennial plants that grow from a crown and send out shoots each year. These shoots are called bines, and must be trained to grow onto twine that attaches to a trellis system above. Each year the hops are harvested by hand in August and then the bines are cut down. The vast majority of hops production is in the Pacific Northwest.

In Virginia, hops production is still very small, but has been increasing with the increase in craft breweries. The purpose of this inservice was to give agents some background with hops production, particularly that in the state of Virginia. Many agents are receiving calls from clients wanting to grow hops, and it is important that the agents be able to give them good advice and help them to make smart decisions regarding growing this crop.

Clients need to know the risks involved, including cost, pests, and finding a market. Starting small, with even just a hop yard of a few rows or maybe 1/4 of an acre is a better option for beginning growers. Growers can then expand later if need be.

I was pleased that the agents who put on this inservice gave each person a folder filled with useful information that we could take home with us. Now I have the material to reference to if I need it! There are also lots of links to find out more information regarding hops that we can use when discussing production with clients. If you want to learn more about hops production, try visiting the Hops page on the VCE website at http://www.ext.vt.edu/topics/agriculture/commercial-horticulture/hops/index.html.

In addition to the information presented during the morning, we were able to go on a brewery tour and farm tours! First we visited the Blue Mountain Barrel House, visited the hop yard, and met with Stan Driver who is a hops grower and chairman of the Old Dominion Hops Cooperative. He plants soybeans in the rows of his crop yard to act as weed control. After that, we went on a tour of the brewery! It was my first brewery tour ever, so I was very interested to see the process.

Afterword, we went to the Wood Ridge Farm Brewery, which plans to produce their own beer from start to finish, including growing the barley. Then we went to visit the hop yard at the Wild Wolf Brewing Co. Here they allow chickens to range in the hop yard, supplying  fertilizer and pest control. It was very interesting to see these facilities.

Our last stop of the day was an abandoned hop yard. Surprisingly, this is the hop yard that had the most yield! Instead of being cut back at the end of the season as most hops are, this hop yard was just left alone. However, they appeared to be doing very well. I hope that someone will take it over for the owner, because there were a lot of hop cones to be harvested there! It would be a shame for them to go to waste.

This was a very educational trip for me, since I had zero knowledge of hops production beforehand. Despite the long day, I had a great time and learned so much!