Appetites: Local beer boom drives hunger for hops

Mighty Axe Hops
Grower Eric Sannerud walked through a quarter-acre plot of Cascade hops that will be harvested this coming weekend at Mighty Axe Hops in Ham Lake, Minnesota.
Jennifer Simonson / MPR News

Minnesota is home to a local beer boom, but the local hop scene has some catching up to do: There are only 20 or so acres of hops under cultivation in the entire state.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl of Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine joined MPR News' Tom Crann to talk about how this essential ingredient is ready to take off in Minnesota.

Hop cone
Eric Sannerud of Mighty Axe Hops showed off the inside of a hop cone on Monday at his farm in Ham Lake. The cone is the flower of the hop plant, which is harvested and added to beer.
Jennifer Simonson / MPR News

Tom Crann: Let's start with a basic explainer. What are hops and why are they essential to beer?

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl: Hops are a bine. Not a vine, but a bine. Vines have tendrils, bines do not. They grow all year. The female flowers look like soft, papery pine cones. If you squish them up in your hand they make this beautiful, piney, fresh beer smell.

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The reason it smells like beer is that hops are one of four essential ingredients to beer: water, malted barley, yeast, hops. Hops are the thing that make beer taste like beer. They are also a preservative.

But not all beers are equally hoppy-tasting. There's a lot brewers can do to emphasize the hop flavor. Something like a Guinness has hops, but you can't really taste them.

Hops
Hops are climbing plants that grow up a support system like this one at Mighty Axe Hops in Ham Lake. They need a lot of sunshine, water and nutrients to thrive, according to grower Eric Sannerud.
Jennifer Simonson / MPR News

Crann: I assume with all the beer-making going on in Minnesota now, there's a huge demand for hops?

Moskowitz Grumdahl: Brewers used to get it from the Northwest of the United States or Germany, but they would be dried hops. Fresh hops are a big deal. A lot of brewers are very excited to use fresh hops — they call them fresh hopped or wet hopped — they make one batch of that beer every year. So all kinds of farmers are busy planting new sets of hops to meet that demand.

Crann: Do we know if Minnesota is a good place to grow hops?

Moskowitz Grumdahl: It's happening, but it's to be determined. Everyone is kind of throwing hops in the ground and seeing what sticks. Some researchers are working on it to see if diseases are a problem. There were a lot of hops growing around here in the 1860s and 1870s but Prohibition put a stop to all that. Now there are wild hops growing in yards and forest and some might be really valuable. So we'll see which ones are disease-resistant, productive. All kinds of people are busy trying to figure out if this is going to fly.

Minnesota hops
These Cascade hops at Mighty Axe Hops in Ham Lake are nearly ready for harvest, during which the vine is cut down and the cones removed.
Jennifer Simonson / MPR News

Crann: Is growing hops easy?

Moskowitz Grumdahl: You talk to some people, like Brau Brothers Brewing who have a hop yard, who say once you put them in you can't even kill them, it's super easy. Others say hops need constant babysitting, watching for spider mites, watering. I've talked to lots of people doing it. There's no consensus.

Mighty Axe Hops farm
Cascade hops at Mighty Axe Hops in Ham Lake were nearly ready for harvest Monday.
Jennifer Simonson / MPR News

Upcoming hoppy events

Lift Bridge in Stillwater is hosting the "Picking and Grinning" hops-picking party

Mighty Axe in Ham Lake, Minnesota, is inviting people to come to "The Mighty Pick"