Harvest time in the Willamette Valley means blue skies over golden fields, the dark treeline at the edge of vision working like the frame on a painting to ground and center the broad pastoral vision before you. The well-tilled earth sinks beneath your feet, welcoming your return to the soil that provides us with food and, in this case, drink. Acres of green vines stretch out ahead, furrows narrowing down in the distance, and you see the harvest workers cutting and clipping as the machinery follows to gather in this year's crop. And over all, like music drifting in the air, like the promise of romance, your world is suffused with the resinous, heady, intoxicating aroma of hops.
...Wait, what? Hops? You mean this isn't about the wine harvest?
"Nine out of ten people think of wine as an agricultural product," said John Harris, brewmaster for Full Sail's Riverplace brewery in downtown Portland. "Far fewer think of beer as an agricultural product -- but it is." He's here to set the record straight: John is the guiding spirit for today's Hop Tour, a sort of Dickensian Ghost of Brewing Present for our look into the process of growing, harvesting, and preparing hops for use in Oregon's craft brewing industry.
The parallels with Oregon's wine industry don't end with the 45th parallel, the line (which runs through Salem) marking half the distance between the equator and the North Pole. While wine connoisseurs know it as the latitude of the great vineyards of France's Rhone valley, John notes that the classic hop producing regions of the world are north of the 45th. So we've boarded a luxurious tour bus (amply stocked in the luggage compartment with aluminum kegs and taps, promising a great afternoon) and are heading south on I-5 towards Hubbard, Oregon, a leisurely 45-minute jaunt across the Willamette and down into the flat alluvial plains of one of the world's most fertile agricultural regions.
Once off the interstate, we wind through oaks and maples that line the country lanes separating crops and farms. We see wine grapes, yes, but it's the seventeen-foot-tall hop trellises that we're here for. The bus pulls up beside the fields of Doug Weathers, owner of Sodbuster Farms, a family operation that is clearly the equal of any vineyard in beauty, in organization, and in dedication to a quality product.
The field we stop at is dedicated to Magnum hops. Bright green clusters the size and shape of fir cones hang under dark leaves; we are encouraged to crush the hops between our fingers and are rewarded with an aroma that combines new-mown hay with the resinous freshness of pine boughs in winter -- perhaps contributing to the Ghost of Christmas Present atmosphere, especially as John dons a garland of hops (see slide show). These hops, with an alpha of 18%, will add a strong bittering component to whatever brew they end up in, aromatic and herbaceous.
In at least one other way, the hop harvest is reminiscent of crush time in a vineyard: "We'll harvest 24 hours a day," says Doug, taking some three weeks to ensure all the hops come in. The hop harvesting machine is one key this isn't pinot noir or Dijon-clone chardonnay that Doug is bringing home: it's a motorized articulated lift, on which two counter-rotating screws drive the hop vines towards a cutter (think sideburn trimmer for that jolly green guy from the frozen-food ads).
"My dad and I built this machine in the Seventies, and revamped it a couple of times," Doug tells me. "We also have one on a tractor, but on this one the operator platform goes up and down with the cutter, so everything is at eye level."
Whether there's something in the aroma of the hops that relaxes and lowers inhibitions, or whether it's just the holiday feeling of the tour, the thought occurs that hops are like catnip for humans. We're all chatting happily and are glad to follow Doug up to the processing area of the farm. He takes us into the brand-new cold storage facility, where we see (and smell) hundreds of bales of Perle and Cascade hops -- 200 pounds per bale; each acre of farmland yields between 5 and 14 bales, depending on variety.
The bales rest at 32 degrees, to keep them at a consistent 10% moisture level. "These are the first bales that went in there," Doug says with justified pride. His operation, with its "Salmon Safe" logo stencilled on several walls, would be right at home with any sustainable, low-impact viticulture and enology (LIVE) winery program in the Willamette valley, down to composting the leaves and stems of the hop vines to return the nutrients to the soil.
Even so, 21st century agriculture uses machinery as specialized in its own way as any modern industry. The equipment for stripping the hops from the vines and conveying them to the drying room whirs and clatters overhead. We follow the crop to the hop drying rooms, and see a huge, thick carpet of these Magnum hops, heated to 150 degrees; the steam fogs glasses and camera lenses, but the aroma of the drying hops continues to work its magic on all of us.
And surrounded by the abundance of the harvest and by the good spirits of the beer produced from these hops, it gives one cause to respect the work of farmers like Doug Weathers, whose entire year is distilled down to three weeks of nonstop effort: fighting weather, pests, and a hundred other dangers for eleven months of the year so that in the last one, the fruits of his labors, the salaries of his workers and the livelihood of his family, all come down to this. Agriculture is a tough and risky life, but on days like today, the rewards are worth it.
A wonderful meal of grilled chicken and cold salads is spread out for us, but John Harris appears with what we've all been waiting for. And just as in Dickens, where the Ghost of Christmas Present waves his cornucopia and everyone is cheered, John waves his hand and cups of fresh-hopped beer fill the hands of the crowd. And fresh-hopped does mean just what you think: made just like a dry-hopped amber, where the hops are added after the boil, this particular batch has fresh hops added after the wort is ready.
Named Lupulin (after humulus lupulus, the Latin name for hops), it perfectly captures the evanescent tang of the hop fields, the vegetal iridescent aroma that we've all been subject to for the past hours. (Oh, details: the Lupulin uses First Gold hops, a British variety in its first year in Oregon, grown at Goschie Farms in Silverton. A classic amber malt base serves as the structure and foil for this grassy, fresh, but not overly bitter hop signature. It's the very distillation of Northwest brewing, the reason we love our beer fresh and local.)
And just as in Dickens, our cares melt away, smiles turn to laughter, new friendships are made and old friendships are deepened. We all sense that life is a little bit better in almost any way you care to note and measure when it includes glass of freshly made beer, brewed with freshly picked hops, on a sunny
afternoon in Oregon's Willamette Valley, sitting on the soil that grew the hops we'll enjoy through the damp winter months ahead.
So in January, when it's been 38 degrees and drizzling for weeks without end and there are weeks without end stretching ahead, the gift of summer and the fragrance of the hops will lift us out of the grey depths of winter and remind us that seasons change, lives come and go, but the earth, the summer, the harvest endures, and therefore so can we.
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