WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM | SEPTEMBER 10 - 16, 2021 | 19
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Stone Cow Brewery’s hop-picking tradition continues Matthew Tota Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
BARRE – As I harvested a large bundle of dark green cascade hop bines at Stone Cow Brewery last weekend, I thought this had to have been what the state’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission intended when it created the farmer-brewery license. Maybe at one time the ABCC believed the license, by far the most popular of the three brewing licenses in the state, would lead more farms to grow hops and barley, or more breweries to start sowing their own fi elds. It hasn’t. The license, developed in 1982, does require that a brewery use some Massachusettsgrown ingredients, but doesn’t mandate a percentage. Although, in a 2011 ruling denying Malden’s Idle Hands Craft Ales an application for a farmerbrewery license, the ABCC did warn it would that year begin stipulating that farmer brewers grow 50% of the grains and hops they use in each beer. It didn’t. No, the farmer-brewery license just off ers small to midsize breweries a fast, sensible path to market, allowing them
to sell beer from their taprooms and freely self-distribute, unlike the other two licenses, manufacturer of wine and malt beverage and pub brewery. And yet, most farmer breweries, whether in urban or bucolic settings, have embraced the spirit of the license. There has been a noticeable push in recent years from breweries, even those with other licenses, wanting to use more local ingredients, whether grown themselves or on a farm somewhere in the state. Rarely do I see and touch and smell the malted barley or hops in my beer. But the few opportunities I’ve had to sit in on a brewing session or an ingredient tasting, then drink the resulting beer, have been the most rewarding experiences. Imagine, then, how brewers must feel when they use their own ingredients, whether honey from beehives at their brewery or hops grown in their own little plot of land. Stone Cow fi rst planted hops in the spring of 2016, painstakingly digging up the earth near its brewery barn to bury the rhizomes, essentially the stems of the hop bines. Some 500 bines — not vines, because the plants
Byron Are of North Brookfi eld harvests hops cones at Stone Cow Brewery Sept. 5. RICK CINCLAIR/TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
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