By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
“This is about the time when they start to open up like this. This is about the time you want to harvest them,” said Marylu Hansen, co-founder of Oast House Hop Farm.
It may not look like it right now, but this could be New Jersey’s next cash crop — hops. The stuff that makes your beer, well, taste like beer.
“There’s a need for hops in New Jersey. So the more people we can get growing, the more we can help the industry and you know bring some of this agriculture back that got lost,” Hansen said.
Hansen and two friends figured that out several years ago, when there was a massive, nationwide hops shortage. It was just as the craft brewing scene was erupting in New Jersey. So they borrowed a piece of land from her parent’s home in Wrightstown. Now with one acre and five years under their belt, the Oast House Hop Farm is considered both the largest and oldest commercial hops grower in the Garden State.
“We’ve had a lot of interest. A lot of people have come out to see what we’ve done, to talk and where’d you get your supplies, how did you do this because you’re basically taking half an acre, investing about $10,000 in it between, you know, poles, plants, the cabling system, string. And then you have to wait,” Hansen said.
Three years of waiting and hoping for a yield. That financial and time commitment — with no promise of a harvest — has been a deterrent for a lot of growers. But the demand is on the rise. New Jersey is home to about 50 microbreweries. Like farm to table, they want locally sourced ingredients.
Is this region a particularly good one for this?
“Yes. Where we sit in the climate it gives them the right amount of time to grow. New Jersey, especially this area, has very good fertile soil,” Hansen said.
Oast House grows 1,000 plants — cascades, nuggets, Columbus, Chinook. A pound will run you about $10 to $15. Hansen and her team just finished their harvest and local breweries are buying it as fast as it can grow.
If you’re not familiar with hops, you can think of this like the grape of a wine. This little cone is what gives a beer its distinct flavor, its aroma and the bitterness.
“The brewing industry really took off during the 19th century and by about 1900 there were over 300 breweries in New York alone,” said Steve Miller of Cornell Cooperative Extension.
In fact, New Jersey and the Mid Atlantic produced mass amounts of hops.
“Similar to the potato famine in Ireland, we had diseases in the United States that were affecting hops and typically what was done back at that time was if you couldn’t grow something in one area, you just picked up and moved to somewhere else and that’s what happened. A lot of the industry started moving to California and Oregon and Washington and then right after that we had prohibition,” Miller said.
Experts hope it’s just a matter of years before the crop makes a comeback. And we see more of a movement for local grain to glass.