How One Oregon Home Brewer Hops to It
If there’s one thing that sets Oregon home brewer Alan Johnson apart from most home brewers it would be his dedication to growing his own hops. “I’ll have to say that it is easier to just buy your hops for brewing rather than get yourself into all the extra time and labor that comes from growing a large amount of hop plants, but if you’re willing to invest the time, the rewards of brewing with your own hops can be wonderful. Any type of hop grown at your home, and in your soil, should lend slightly different and unique flavor and aromas due to the location and type of soil that you are growing them in. My hop field is planted in an area that for twenty years was the refuse of cleaning horse stalls in our barn.” He adds, “This ground is the most fertile area we have on our property,” and one can certainly understand why. He currently grows about 30 hop plants with 13 different types of hops including Cascade, Mt Hoods, Nuggets, Willamette’s, Tettenger, and Bianca Gold
Alan, who works as a railroad switchman, began brewing seven years ago when a co-worker turned him on to the hobby. “A guy I worked with got me interested so I bought a basic equipment kit and started extract brewing for a year, then moved into all grain brewing…My brewing technique has changed drastically since I first started. Besides doing extract and progressing to all grain and brewing in my garage, and fermenting in carboys, I have converted my old barn into a small brewery.”
To those thinking of getting into brewing themselves, Alan advises they get a starter kit and “absorb as much reading material as possible.” In particular he recommends getting Charlie Papazian’s book The Complete Joy of Hombrewing and subscribing to Brew Your Own magazine.
Five years ago Alan, seeing “the need for homebrewers to meet and get together in our area,” formed the Deer Island Brewers Homebrew Club. The club has 10 members and participates in such American Homebrewers Association events as “Big Brew Day” and “Teach a friend to homebrew day.”
If something besides growing his own hops sets Alan apart from most of the home brewing pack, it would be his determination to use only his own original recipes. “I have never followed someone else’s recipe and probably never will. It’s just some personal defect in my character I guess. Even when I’m asked to follow some joint effort clone recipe to be shared by other homebrewers, I can’t resist tweaking the grain bill or the hopping.”
Alan’s website DeerIslandBrewery.com features information about his club and his brewery, including a detailed description of growing, harvesting, and drying hops.
