Brewing up a Virginia hops industry...

By Tonia Moxley [email protected] 381-1675 | Posted Yesterday

LEXINGTON — “Here, this one won’t beat you up too much.”


Master brewer Jason Oliver passed a shot glass of his Four Point Session India pale ale across the bar. It was a bitter brew, but certainly gentler than the Eight Point IPA served at Devil’s Backbone’s taproom.

Through the window behind the bar, Chris Gregoria navigated a catwalk between stainless steel brew tanks, a bucket swinging from each hand. From them, he poured about 9 pounds of bright green pellets — dried, ground hop buds — into the brewing system.

That small amount of hops would flavor about 310 cases of the brewery’s signature German-style Vienna Lager, Oliver said. But it takes six to seven times that to make the same amount of Eight Point IPA, and still more to make a new 16 Point IPA that’s in the works.

“Hops are like a gateway drug,” Oliver said. The more hops brewers put into beer, the more hops customers want, he said.

Last year, India pale ale was the top-selling beer in the U.S., according to trade magazine Virginia Craft Beer. That growing demand for ultra-bitter brews is fanning fears of hops shortages, and in Virginia it’s raising hopes that commercial hops farming can be re-established in the commonwealth.

Oliver said Devil’s Backbone must negotiate hops contracts years in advance, and even then a crop failure could lead to shortages. Microbrewers who can’t get contracts already face shortages, he said.

Virginia has been slow coming to craft brewing, but it’s gaining ground quickly. The industry has nearly doubled from 58 licensed brewers in 2013 to 103 today, according to Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control figures. Craft breweries are defined as private companies producing fewer than 3 million barrels of beer annually.

And that growth may create opportunities for new farm products.

“To cross over the symbolic 100 marker is a great achievement, but we believe it’s only scratching the surface of what’s going to come about,” said Todd Haymore, secretary of agriculture and forestry for the commonwealth.

From cider, mead and wine to distilled spirits and craft beer, “Virginia is … becoming known for being a really strong craft beverage producer,” Haymore said. “One thing they have in common, the products that are going into those craft beverages all start on a farm.”

A growing industry

Interest in hops growing is rising with craft brewing, mostly as a sideline to other incomes. Over the past two years, the Old Dominion Hops Co-operative has grown from about two dozen members to more than 80, Chairman Devon Kistler said. But overall hops production is growing more slowly than brewing. Many operations have less than an acre under cultivation, according to a 2014 Virginia Cooperative Extension hops grower survey.

Kistler is a partner in Huguenot Hops, a 3-acre operation in Midlothian. There is promise of profit for hops growers, he said, but also a number of challenges. Hops require upfront investment in trellising systems, and a long wait for the highest yields. They are labor intensive, requiring constant weed and pest control. Harvesting is mostly done by hand, although mechanization may soon become more widespread.

Kistler said Huguenot Hops plans to open a processing facility this summer. It will serve growers within a one-hour drive of the facility, he said. In November, the governor’s office approved a $40,000 grant to help Black Hops Farm in Loudoun County open a processing facility that promises to buy up to 60 percent of its product from Virginia growers.

But there are other challenges for the nascent hops industry, rooted in the biology of the plant, and the state’s climate.

A vigorous, perennial plant related to hemp, hops grow up to 25 feet in one season. In late summer, the plants produce an acidic flower bud, or cone, that when added to beer imparts a refreshing astringent quality. Hops can also be used to flavor hard cider and gin.

Beer is thousands of years old, but for much of its history was a sweet fermented drink known as barleywine. Early brewers flavored it with herbs and even pine boughs. Hops are relatively new to brewing, with the first recorded use of them dated to A.D. 736 . According to the German Beer Institute, that year Benedictine monks in Bavaria added wild hops to their brews, and with them, the bitter bite and crisp taste that’s been popular ever since.

Hops were a major crop in colonial Virginia, but the industry eventually shifted away to other parts of the country. Today, high-yield commercial U.S. production is centered in the Pacific Northwest. Washington state leads the nation by a wide margin, with 56 million pounds grown there in 2014, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The challenge for Virginia growers now is finding a way to compete.

A seasonal brew

Nelson County nurseryman Stan Driver planted 50 hops plants in 2007, anticipating demand for the product when Blue Mountain Brewery opened nearby. Later, Driver said he began helping the brewery tend its own hops, which according to its website are now spread across three hops yards.

Blue Mountain and every other brewer in the state uses dried hops produced outside of Virginia. They have to. But seasonal “harvest ales” made with fresh local hops are becoming a seasonal rite in the state. Blue Mountain uses wet hops in harvest beers made in late summer. Devil’s Backbone buys about 400 pounds of fresh hops from a Virginia producer each year for its own harvest ale, Oliver said.

But fresh hops have a short shelf life — most should be used within 24 hours — and because Virginia yields are low, their product is expensive.

Mid-Atlantic hops yields, even from mature plants, lag far behind the Pacific Northwest. One acre of plants in Oregon produces between 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of dried hops. Meanwhile, the same variety grown in North Carolina yields between 160 and 320 pounds of dried hops, according to research done at North Carolina State University.

“Competing head-to-head with Pacific Northwest growers on dried hops is nearly impossible,” Driver said.

So, for now most Virginia growers focus on selling small batches of fresh hops at $25 to $30 a pound, he said.

“I can’t see them paying for 100 or 1,000 pounds,” Driver said of brewers. The cost is just too high.

But if Virginia growers could increase yields, that could bring prices down, and “then we’d have an industry,” Driver said.

Yields will increase naturally as plants already under cultivation mature, but what’s really needed is a better plant.

“The thing that’s holding us back is we don’t have hops hybridized for this region,” Driver said. “We take plants hybridized for other latitudes and regions of the world and take them out of their happy zone.”

Virginia Tech horticulture Extension Specialist Holly Scoggins wants to change that.

“There are no hops specialists in Virginia,” Scoggins said. “Nobody was paying attention to this. It’s just blown up in the last five years.”

High and dry

Today’s commercial hops varieties require long summer days to set the maximum number of flower buds, Scoggins said. The farther south those plants are grown, the shorter the days and the lower the production. Weather is also a factor, she said. Hops do best in arid regions, where powdery and downy mildew diseases have little chance to grow. Virginia has a relatively humid climate that encourages mildews. Virginia insects also feast on hops, Scoggins said.

She wants to find or develop a new cultivar acclimated to shorter days, resistant to mildews and tolerant of pests that could boost Virginia hops production. But it requires research, and that requires funding.

Scoggins said she has applied for a $15,000 starter grant from the Virginia Agricultural Council to build a hops trial yard near the Tech campus. There she and collaborators could gather data that they would use to apply for federal research grants that could eventually lead to hops plants made for the mid-Atlantic region. The council is set to announce its grant winners in May.

Scoggins is but one extension employee working on hops. She calls it a grass-roots effort that’s sprouting across the extension service. Over the past two years, specialists and agents have raced to develop a range of resources to help growers.

Scoggins and Laura Siegle, an Amelia County extension agent, have developed a hops growing guide for the state, and completed a grower survey to identify industry needs. Tech has developed an online budget tool to help growers estimate the costs of startup and expansion. Specialized soil testing for hops yards, as well as weed and pest identification services are available.

The Virginia Tech Enology Analytical Services Laboratory, which started out testing grape juice samples for the state’s wine industry, has now expanded to hops. Director Ken Hurley said the lab started offering hops analysis this past summer, and he expects demand to grow exponentially. The lab tests hops samples for bitterness levels, storage properties and perhaps most important, for flavor and aroma compounds. That information helps growers market their hops to brewers interested in specific flavors.

Hurley also has a developed a hunch he hopes will pay off for hops growers.

“Very, very preliminary data,” he said (emphasizing the word “preliminary” several times) suggests that hops grown in the commonwealth have fewer harsh bittering compounds than their out-of-state counterparts. They also may contain more of the pleasing aroma and flavor compounds that brewers look for. But Hurley said he needs equipment and samples to test his hypothesis.

Like Scoggins, he has applied for a starter grant from the Virginia Agricultural Council to research this question. If Hurley can show that Virginia hops have special characteristics, growers would have a powerful marketing tool that could justify higher prices.

Fermenting the future

The burgeoning craft beer industry supports over 8,000 jobs in the commonwealth and has a $623 million economic impact on the state, according to the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild.

Since the 2012 passage of a state law allowing brewery taprooms to sell their beers for on- and off-premises consumption, tax revenues have grown.

Taproom sales of craft beers grew from 588,244 gallons in 2012 to 855,170 gallons in 2014, according to Virginia ABC data. Over the same period, revenues from the 26 cents per gallon state malt beverage tax on taproom sales rose from $149,376 to $217,158. Those numbers do not include sales taxes, and they do not include any taxes collected on retail sales in restaurants and stores, ABC spokeswoman Kathleen Shaw said. Those figures were not available.

Hops growers face significant challenges in the commonwealth, but brewers say they are committed to nurturing hops production here.

Devil’s Backbone is preparing this year to brew a 100 percent Virginia-sourced harvest ale, Oliver said. It will be made with wet hops and barley grown in-state, and “it will be the most expensive beer we have made,” he said.

The company — which last year sold 44,000 barrels of beer and continues to expand its Lexington brewery — is not just committed to its own growth.

“We would like for our impact on this area to be bigger than just making beer,” Devil’s Backbone Chief Operating Officer Hayes Humphreys said. “We would love to be a part of growing industries in Virginia.”

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