Hop Growers

Wednesday, 24 September 2014 04:49

Tavistock farmers looking to cash in on booming craft beer industry

TAVISTOCK - As the craft beer industry continues to grow in popularity, a pair of local couples are looking to cash in.

The Wynette and Bartlett families have started growing four acres of hops as part of the Tavistock Hop Company.

Co-owner Kyle Wynette says they ended up with 30-40 pounds of wet, immature hops this year that weren't fully developed in terms of flavour or oils.

"There isn't a wealth of information out there about yield or how many pounds per acre we can expect. What we do is we look to the guys that grow it up in the Upper Mid-West US and we look to their veils and depending on the variety, you could see anywhere from 800 pounds to three thousand pounds per acre."

Right now the company is working on Centennial, Cascade and Newport hops.

Wynette says it costs about 10-15 thousand dollars per acre to put in hops and then even more in production costs with a return on investment not expected for a few years.

"We have four acres. There will be 600 vines and once they are mature they would take to hand pick about an hour and a half each so that's a lot of man hours. We have one of a few of the Wolf harvesters that are 30 plus year old machines brought over from Europe and that allows us to pick about 170 of those vines in one hour."

Wynette says other costs include equipment for drying, bailing, pellotizing, vacuum sealing and cold storage.

While he says it is an expensive crop to produce, he believes the pay off will be worth it down the road though he says it will take a good three years before they see a good, mature crop come off the field.

He also says it's a very labour intensive crop.

"I'm usually out in the field a few hours a night doing things like fertilizing through our irrigation, spraying for fungus, scouting the crop. A lot of it is crawling on your hands and knees weeding the actual rows. Definitely not an easy task but I think it could be rewarding once we start getting a good harvest."

Wynette plans to plant an additional 4 or 5 acres next season with the dream of his own brewery at least ten years down the road.

You can view the company's website by clicking here.