In Knightstown, Indiana, a new hop farm is under construction. Crazy Horse Hops is roughly a month away from having all of their hops planted for their first growing season and on June 4 they will showcase their hard work for Purdue Extension’s Hops Field Day.
Hops Field Day will be a workshop that covers various hop farm management topics, including: irrigation management, hilling, and insect identification.
“Some people heard about it [Hops Field Day] and just want to see what it looks like,” said Ryan Hammer, co-founder of Crazy Horse Hops. “It’s hard to understand what it looks like and the way the process works unless you have some direct contact with the plants and with the trellis system and kind of with the process of growing them.”
“It will be general, but for the most part, it will be more angled towards people with some experience growing hops.”
The Purdue Extension mentioned in a press release that little research had been done to “identify best management practices for Indiana’s soil and climatic conditions, or determine the scale at which the industry could be most profitable.”
They formed an advisory committee, with growers from established hops farms in Indiana, to address the challenges they faced. The Purdue Extension listed the challenges as:
“…1) identifying hop varieties and trellis systems that are most productive under Indiana’s soil and climatic conditions, 2) quantifying the economic costs and benefits, opportunities and challenges associated with development of a local hop industry, 3) increasing the visibility of the local hop industry and the amount of locally grown hops in Indiana beer, 4) training Extension educators and existing growers in hop management practices as well as providing opportunities for training in advanced hop production, and 5) increasing the practice of on-farm participatory research on hop farms.”
There are not many hops farm in Indiana, but they are continuing to pop-up throughout the state. The demand for fresh hops is big business in the beer industry, but as Hammer told me, most of the hops grown in the United States are currently grown in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
“Getting fresh hops here to Indiana breweries is expensive, cost prohibitive, and you also have to overnight them if you want fresh,” said Hammer. “Being right here, right down the road, we can get them fresh product as soon as possible, basically as soon as it’s picked that day.”
Crazy Horse Hops will grow Cascade and Chinook at their staple hops. Hammer told me those two types of hops grow well in Indiana. They will also grow a couple rows of Sorachi Ace, a type of hop developed in Japan, as they have at least one Indianapolis brewery who is interested in the hop.
There are 100 spots available – only 16 taken as of last Sunday – for the Hops Field Day and you will need to register with the Purdue Extension if you are interested.
