4 minute read
Upstart New York Company Gets Hopping
by Lee Allen
Fresh American Hops wants to be the leader in providing organic, local hops for New York state and surrounding state businesses. The company focuses on freshness from bine to batch in order to help make better beer.
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While the Pacific Northwest region, according to Hop Growers of America, holds contemporary big-dogon-the-porch honors when it comes to commercial hop production, one New York company is doing what it can to make inroads in the hops department.
Fresh American Hops, based in Canisteo, NY, is taking advantage of legislation implemented in 2012 by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to formulate a farm brewery license promoting the use of local ingredients.
“That legislation demonstrates New York is truly working for small business as the law allows breweries and wineries the opportunity to invest in new enterprises and expand existing operations,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Jumping on that bandwagon, Fresh American Hops was founded three years ago by two millennials, Zach Harkenrider and Glenn Garrett, who planted a single row with 30 plants (under the initial banner of Northeast Top Hops), they soon invited businessman/investor Scott Burrell, a former bar owner and the product of a family-run bar and grill, to join them as a partner and financial backer.
Garrett had received an inheritance from his father’s estate and Harkenrider’s father was a builder, so they used the initial funding and the skills available to construct a barntype greenhouse measuring 36x28 feet, incorporating subterranean heating and cooling that used the Earth’s temperature at 2,200 feet above sea level for low-cost temperature control to grow indoor year-round hops.
“We installed a geothermal system and put in an I Grow operation — a greenhouse brain that tells precisely when to water and release the six different nutrients we feed our plants or when to open shutters and turn fans on and off. Our irrigation and drainage are automated. We didn’t skip any steps in trying to make this as good as it could possibly be,” says Burrell.
Interestingly, New York used to be a national leader in hop production when more than three million pounds were sold annually — back in the 1850s. Then, along came prohibition, followed by a devastating fungus that slammed the door on the New York hops industry.
Beer & Brewing magazine notes that hops came to New England colonies with the first English settlers in the 1600s, quickly supplemented with wild New World hops, and as settlements moved west, so did hop farming. Northwestern New York state in the 1800s led the pack, despite high humidity and cold spring temperatures that made hop bines prone to mildew diseases and aphid infestations.
Fresh American Hops wants to become known as the fresh hops supplier for New York and perhaps two dozen other states within an eight to 10 hour drive from their home base of two outdoor acres and more 1,000 square-feet under glass.
“We don’t want to get into palletizing and fight for a share of that market. Freshness is our focus, going directly from bine to batch to make a better beer,” says Burrell in advance of an outdoor harvest of second- and thirdyear plants. “We should get a thousand pounds with a fantastic alpha acid level. Typical levels run between four to seven, while our initial press runs tested out at over eight with yellow lupulin just gushing out of crushed cones.”
A fall harvest laboratory report registered those higher-than-normal alpha acid levels of 8.5 with beta acids at 4.7, according to their former company web page. “By adding calcium, nitrogen, and some other specific organic items, we’ve managed to make some hops on steroids,” Burrell says, promoting the fact that “We’re 100 per cent organic with zero pesticides and only organic insecticides.”
With 23 feet of vertical indoor growing room, Fresh American Hops has an automated Dosatron system that controls the necessary variables involving temperature (72°F yearround), irrigation, drainage, with six nutrients of measured ppm fed on a computerized schedule. The first indoor harvest of nearly 300 plants (one-third Cascade, one-third Chinook, and one-third Michigan Copper) was grown out in an original formula mixture of coco coir, perlite, clay pellets, and soil from their property.
According to Great Lakes Hops, breeders of Michigan Copper, favorable comments have been received concerning cone size and yield, fresh aroma, and disease resistance. Alpha and beta acids have averaged 8.81 to 10.5 and 2.45 to 2.55 respectively. Cascade hops have been around since the mid 1950s, “flowery and spicy with a citrus-like quality” according to Oregon’s Fresh Hops, which describe the Chinook as “slightly spicy with alpha acid content ranging from 12 to 14 per cent.”
Says Harkenrider: “We have aspirations of building several similar greenhouses around the country, selling only fresh product. We took some of the techniques of what we are researching, which turned out to be a collegiate volume of knowledge, about humulus lupulus — better known as hops. Part of the research included what NASA was doing at the International Space Station to develop sustainable food grown in artificial light. All of this knowledge is added to the traditional hop growing methods to produce a better product. Some things are proprietary in our bine to batch process, so we can’t share everything we do to grow a superior hop and provide it fresher than ever before… but we guarantee if it’s not the freshest, most aromatic, and flavorful hop you’ve ever brewed with, we’ll give you your money back.”
