A bitter harvest for better beer
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Craft beer brewing and urban gardening are both trends in their own right. Now a group in the Longfellow neighborhood of south Minneapolis is set to combine those activities by planting a community garden where they grow only hops, the bitter plant used to brew beer.
Longfellow Community Hop Garden volunteer Andrew Schmitt said the group wants city dwellers to have the option to brew beer with fresh hops grown right in their own neighborhood. They also see the cooperative garden as a social activity.
"It’s something that’s unique and something that’s fun and that’s different," Schmitt said. "Beer is a communal beverage and this speaks to that at the most basic level."
The hops prized by brewers are the female flower of the hop plant, which can grow up to 20 feet tall. Here's how beer brewing author John Palmer described them: "Fresh hops smell fresh, herbal, and spicy, like evergreen needles and have a light green color like freshly mown hay."
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The Community Hops group started working with the Longfellow Community Council and others to prepare the county-owned land at the intersection of Dight Avenue and 38th Street last year. But this is the first season they'll plant and harvest the hops.
The group plans to start by growing Cascade, an aromatic variety of hops used to brew beers like American pale ales. But they're also planning to partner with the University of Minnesota to experiment with how other varieties of hops react to Minnesota's sometimes unforgiving climate. It may be good timing for beer brewers too. A report from Hop Growers of America found that hops prices have nearly doubled in the last decade.
They want to recruit 30 members into the garden in this year, each of whom will receive a share of hops at the end of the growing season.
"Right now it’s in the infancy of the project," Schmitt said. "The idea is to work out any kinks and bugs with this pilot project here, and grow beyond that to other cities and communities to where we’re able to [start gardens] across the Midwest, and hopefully across the country."