Story from the Raleigh News & Observer:
The very soul of beer, the ingredient responsible for its wonderful bitterness, is now being grown in North Carolina.
Hoping to build on the craft-brewing and local food movements, N.C. State University researchers in Raleigh and a handful of farmers in the mountains are growing experimental plots of hops, the cone-shaped flower clusters that brewers add to beer for bitterness and aroma and as a natural preservative.
Rob Austin, Deanna Osmond, and Jeanine Davis at NCSU got a $28,000, one-year grant this year from the Golden LEAF Foundation to investigate the commercial viability of growing hops here. In March, a couple of volunteers from a soon-to-open Durham brewery called Fullsteam came to help researchers plant a small plot of about 200 plants at a university field laboratory near Lake Wheeler south of Raleigh.
Davis, an extension agent specialist, had already been working with four farms in the mountains that are trying to grow hops. The goals, Austin said, are to test the plants’ ability to grow in North Carolina and to monitor potential diseases, particularly mold, which drove hops production out of the eastern United States and Midwest in the 1920s. Now most hops grown in the U.S. come from arid parts of the Pacific Northwest.
A couple of years ago, though, farmers in the western part of the state decided to plant hops. They were spurred by a spike in hops prices and the rise of craft-brewing in North Carolina. This year, some hope to reap their first significant harvest.
Thanks to loyal reader Sam for pointing me to the story.