Craft Beer is Helping Hops Farming Take Root in Wisconsin

The vines of Humulus lupulus, commonly known as hops, are emerging from the thawing spring ground and beginning to climb the enormous polls that are neatly arranged into rows at Gorst Valley’s hop yard in Mazomanie, Wisconsin. Able to grow as much as a foot per day, the plants will stand twenty feet tall by the end of June.

Gorst Valley is Wisconsin’s largest producer of hops, one of the main ingredients in beer. The cone-like fruits will be harvested in September and sold to craft brewers around the state.

Craft brewers’ interest in producing new and unique beers made from locally-grown ingredients is helping hops farming take root in Wisconsin, according to a brewer at Milwaukee-based Lakefront Brewery.

“There’s a lot of interest among brewers in using local hops. It’s a really cool feeling to be able to make a beer that’s completely different from anything other breweries are putting out, and Wisconsin-grown ingredients can definitely help give a beer that extra something special” said Tyler White, who has been working at Lakefront Brewery since 2013.

Lakefront Brewery produced a beer called Wisconsinite using only ingredients grown in Wisconsin. It’s one of the more popular beers the brewery has ever put out, White said. 

“Consumers, especially millennials, are really interested in local ingredients. It’s become a huge fad in the beer industry over the past decade or so,” White said.

With brewers eager to capitalize on the local food movement, the Wisconsin hops industry is ripe for explosion, and researchers and growers are working together to develop successful methods of producing hops in the Midwest climate, something that has proven challenging for farmers.

Until the early 20th century, Wisconsin produced 20 percent of the country’s hops, with Sauk County being home to much of the production. By 1867, Wisconsin was producing over 11 million pounds of hops annually, according to Gorst Valley Hops’ website.

Disease and pests ravaged Wisconsin’s hops in the late 1800’s, and much of the state’s production was replaced by dairy farming by the early 1900’s, according to a bulletin produced by Gorst Valley Hops.

After the collapse of the Wisconsin industry, production was pushed to the Pacific Northwest. Although sizeable brewing companies still look to Washington, Oregon, and Idaho for large quantities of hops, craft brewers’ recent demands for local ingredients have piqued Wisconsin farmers’ interest in reviving the industry.

However, farmers need to develop methods of preventing and treating disease if they want to prevent another state-wide crop failure, so research is absolutely necessary if hops production is to be brought back to Wisconsin, said Ruth Genger, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been studying hops for the past five years.

Genger focuses on cleaning up virus-infected hops plants sent to her by farmers. The plants are subjected to two-week-long cycles of high temperatures, up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which kills the viruses, according to a study she published in 2016.

The disease-free plants are sent to farmers around Wisconsin for field trials. Growers provide feedback about how much fruit the plants yield, disease prevalence, and which varieties they prefer.

Genger said this information is helpful in deciding which hops varieties are best suited to grow in Wisconsin.

One of the farmers working with Genger is David Buss, who has been growing hops in Waterloo in South Central Wisconsin for the past six years.

Buss said he sells his hops to brewers throughout the US, but most of his harvest is sold to local brewers in Wisconsin through the grower-run Wisconsin Hop Exchange Cooperative. The cooperative processes, packages, stores, and sells members’ hops through consignment sales.

“There’s a lot of interest in locally-grown hops. Currently our main market is the smaller startup craft brewer. Many purchase 100 percent of their hops locally to set themselves apart from other brewers,” Buss said.

Even with a market for local hops emerging, rebuilding Wisconsin’s industry has not been an easy process for farmers. 

“Growing hops here can be tricky because disease is still really prevalent,” said Nick Moran who is pursuing his Masters in Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and works under Genger studying hops.

Buss said he has struggled to control disease on his farm, especially downy mildew, a fungus that thrives in Wisconsin’s wet conditions. It’s the same disease that was largely responsible for the collapse of Wisconsin’s production a century ago.

Constant battles with disease have prevented Wisconsin hops farming from exploding, according to Buss. Techniques used to combat disease and pests in the Pacific Northwest don't work in the more humid Wisconsin climate, he said.

“The Wisconsin hop industry is experiencing growing pains. We do not currently have the volume of hops to meet the needs of some of the larger brewers in the state because we just can’t logistically produce that much yet,” he said.

Most of the hop growers in Wisconsin are relatively small-scale, managing yards ranging from 1 to 20 acres. Farmers in the Pacific Northwest oversee farms as large as 1,000 acres, according to the Wisconsin Hop Exchange.

For this reason, much of the current research on Wisconsin hops is focused on quality, not quantity, according to Genger.

“We want to see hops become a specialty crop here in Wisconsin. There’s no way we can match the volume of hops coming out of the Pacific Northwest, but I think we can produce a better product,” Genger said.

White agreed, saying that growing smaller quantities of unique varieties of hops may be a smart decision for Wisconsin farmers.

“As a brewer, I’m always looking for something new and different. If a farmer comes to me with a hop that tastes like nothing I’ve had before, I have to use it,” he said.

In recent years, some brewers have been using wild Wisconsin hops in their beers. When Pearl Street, a brewery based in La Crosse, released the Linalool IPA in 2015, they made history as the first brewery to use the Northern Discovery hop variety in a bottled beer, according to an article published by Growler Magazine.

Paul Stang found Northern Discovery growing wild on his parents land in southern Wisconsin in 2007. An experienced homebrewer, Stang decided to make a beer with them.

“I was amazed by how good the beer was that came from it. It really didn’t taste like anything I’d brewed with,” he said in his interview with Growler Magazine.

“That’s exactly the kind of thing craft brewers are searching for. We’re always trying to produce the next ‘it’ beer,” White said of the Northern Discovery hops.

White said that between innovations like using wild hops, the state’s storied beer brewing history, and residents’ love of beer, he thinks there is definite potential for making Wisconsin a hub for craft beer production. 

“I’ve worked in the beer industry all around the country, and I think some of the best breweries in the US are in Wisconsin. Lakefront, New Glarus, Central Waters, and Funk Factory are all phenomenal.”

Buss said he thinks the state will see an industry form around Wisconsin brewers creating beers for Wisconsinites using Wisconsin-grown hops. 

“As the hop industry in Wisconsin matures, and as current growers expand their acreage and are able to produce hops at volumes to meet the demands of craft brewers in the state, I think we’ll be able to create really successful system based entirely in Wisconsin. I believe the future looks bright,” he said.