Synopsis
"The runaway craft beer market and ever-expanding local foods movement have recently converged and the inevitable outcome is an abrupt and robust demand by craft brewers for locally grown ingredients for making beer, such as hops--the flowers of which are essential to making beer--and barley. While that may be good news for farmers looking to diversify, there s a catch. Hops have not been grown commercially in the Northeastern United States for 100 years. After an onslaught of fungal disease and insects wiped out the hop yards at the turn of the century, the industry packed up and moved to arid regions of the Pacific Northwest. Today farmers in New York and New England are working hard to respond to the craft brewers desperate call for locally grown hops. But hop yards, virtual forests of 20-foot poles, are expensive to build and the hop vines that grow up them take 3 long years to reach full production. And what about the fungal diseases and insects that wiped out the hop industry last time around which today are thriving in the hotter and more humid Northeast in this era of climate change? Answers to these and other questions can be found in the Twenty-First Century Guide to Small-Scale Sustainable Hop Production the only book on the market about raising hops sustainably, on a small-scale, for the commercial craft beer market in the Northeast. Written by hop farmers and craft brewery owners Laura Ten Eyck and Dietrich Gehring, the book weaves the story of their Helderberg Hop Farm with the colorful history of New York and New England hop farming, relays horticultural information about the unusual hop plant and the mysterious resins it produces that give beer it s distinctively bitter flavor, and imparts comprehensive instructions for establishing a healthy hop yard, protecting hops from disease and insects, and processing hops for sale to brewers. The book includes an overview of the numerous native, heirloom and modern varieties of hops and their purposes as well as an easy-to-understand explanation of the beer brewing process, which is critical for hop growers to understand in order be able to provide a high quality product brewers want to buy. (A few recipes are also included.) The overwhelming majority of resources about hop production currently available are geared toward the Pacific Northwest s large-scale commercial growers who use chemical pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and fertilizers and deal with regionally specific climate, soils, weeds and insect populations. Ten Eyck and Gehring, however, focus on farming hops sustainably. While they relay their experience about growing in a new Northeastern climate subject to the higher temperatures and volatile cycles of drought and deluge brought about by global warming, the book is an essential resource for home-scale and small-scale commercial hops growers in all regions. The book contains numerous photographs and illustrations. "
About the Author
Laura Ten Eyck owns and operates Helderberg Hop Farm and Indian Ladder Farmstead Brewery and Cidery with her husband, Dietrich Gehring. The two have been growing hops and brewing beer at home for more than twenty-five years and have been working to restore local hop production in the northeast. Helderberg Hop Farm is located on 60 acres of Indian Ladder Farms, an extensive pick-your-own orchard with a local foods grocery, bakery, café, and retail gift shop in upstate New York that Ten Eyck previously managed. The orchard has been in Ten Eyck s family for four generations, and she and Gehring have lived there for more than twenty-five years, growing fruits and vegetables for sale to restaurants, gardening extensively, and raising sheep for meat and wool, dairy goats for milk, and chickens for eggs and meat. Ten Eyck is also senior manager of New York Outreach and Projects at American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit where she advocates for national and regional farmland conservation, and was previously a freelance journalist. Laura lives on the Helderberg Hop Farm in Altamont, New York. Dietrich Gehring is a small-scale commercial hop grower, professional photographer, home brewer, and co-owner, with Laura Ten Eyck, of Helderberg Hop Farm and Indian Ladder Farmstead Brewery and Cidery. Helderberg Hop Farm, located outside the City of Albany in upstate New York, is a 60-acre farm growing barley, hops, apples, pumpkins, and blueberries. Gehring grew up working on his grandparents dairy farm, attended the New England School of Art and Design, and went on to pursue a career in photography while working as a photo editor for Animals magazine and Workman Publishing, editing the Audubon and Greenpeace photo calendar series, among others. He is a photographer of agricultural and natural landscapes, selling his work through galleries and to individuals. He has photographed all manner of farms ranging from apple orchards and vegetable and sunflower farms to cattle, sheep, goat, pig, and poultry farms. His work has been published in numerous magazines and can be viewed online at www.dietrichgehring.com. Gehring s long love of hops and brewing began decades ago, when he was sales manager for Newman s Albany Brewing Company, one of the first craft breweries in the United States. It was here that he learned how to brew beer and market it locally. He has worked in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York s Capital Region selling high-end imported and domestic beers, as well as in specialty stores in the Boston area offering a wide selection of craft beer. Dietrich lives on the Helderberg Hop Farm in Altamont, New York.
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