Australia: Thirst for craft beer spurring on an expansion for Australia’s biggest hop grower
Australia's insatiable taste for craft beer is spurring on an expansion for the country's biggest hop grower, ABC.net reported on July 15.
Making a brew is as much an art as a science for craft beer makers, with a careful combination of hot malted barley, hops and wheat key to the right batch.
Tasmania's Derwent Valley and Eurobin in Victoria are at the forefront of growth in the hop market, helping bubble along Australia's burgeoning craft beer industry.
Hop Products Australia is producing its biggest variety of hops to cater to the demand from a growing number of micro breweries, which has now topped about 400 nationally.
The company has followed the market trend by moving away from the bitter hops favoured by generations past, and is looking to the craft hops of the future, where flavour rather than bitterness is preferred.
Hop Products Australia is increasing its hop fields by half to keep up with consumer demand.
"We're harvesting 230 hectares this year and that's about the area that we've had in production in the past, although it's increased in terms of the main varieties … that we are producing," farm manager Oliver Ward said.
"We have also constructed an extra 40 hectares of trellis, in the past 12 months in Tasmania, and on our farm in Victoria we've constructed another 50 hectares and planted that out as well."
Craft beer drinkers are demanding greater taste and aroma from their hops. Even the big players are trying to meet the demand for boutique beer, although that is a bone of contention for the purists.
Beer blogger Chris Lukianenko said the definition of a craft beer was a "grey area".
"You've got some of the big players in the market that are producing flavoursome beer," he said.
"Some of the large breweries that are calling it craft and then you've got the other end of the scale, where you've got smaller producers who are one-man bands producing beers with a lot of love and heart.
The taste for bigger and better flavour has sent Hop Products Australia on a fact-finding mission which has resulted in a ramping up of research in the nursery.
Hop breeder Simon Whittock said the company aimed to generate 20 to 30 crosses each year to plant up to 2,000 new seedlings.
"Picking the right male and the right pollen to put on to the right female is a critical part of the process," he said.
The hop breeding program is not dissimilar to breeding animals — it's all about the parents.
"Selection of the parents you use is very scientific — there are a lot of genetics that goes into it, in terms of looking at DNA and understanding how traits are passed on from parent to offspring," Mr Whittock said.
Any new varieties the team from Hop Products Australia develops have a type of patent on them, giving the company exclusive rights to grow those particular hops.
"We do 180,000 cuttings a year to feed the planting program that we have which in turn feeds the demands from the market that we're seeing at the moment," Mr Whittock said.
The company has already hit the jackpot with the Galaxy hop, a type of hop that has caught the eye of the market and sold internationally.
At Bushy Park the company is now growing 12 different commercial varieties of hops, at its property in Victoria there are six.
Mr Ward said less than a decade ago the company was planting four varieties.
"There was a spike in the Alpha demand in 2009 and then we could see that that demand wasn't sustainable and so we started investing back into our breeding program and proprietary varieties and developing them and expanding them," he said.
"We've been busy pulling out old varieties and putting in the new ones that we have got exclusive access to and rights over in the market."
The exploding craft beer market is a strange phenomenon at a time when beer consumption overall is down and still dropping.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal a drop in beer consumption of 40 per cent over 50 years.
The number of people drinking craft beer however, is on the rise.
It is good news for Tasmania's Derwent Valley where 60 per cent of Australia's hops are grown.
Hop Products Australia's Owen Johnston said while tonnage hit a low point in 2009, farms had been replanting and changing the variety mix to reinvigorate paddocks and increase yield.
"This year we hope to go over 1,000 tonnes and in the coming years we have a stretch target of something over 1,500 tonnes," he said.
The company is part of an international hop trading company, but in Australia its farms have been small enough to change quickly to meet changing demand.
"I like to refer to them as macro consumer trends — they're the same trends that drive coffee and cheese and wine," Mr Johnston said.
"People are much more conscious of what they put in their bodies, the way the hop farm and the hops that we grow for this sector of the market really deepens the story behind their beers."
Mr Ward said the more craft brewers popped up across the country, the better it was for business.
"It's been a volatile industry in the past, but it's certainly got some stability under it at the moment and we are fortunate enough to have owners that are willing to back us and the investment in the expansion, so it's a great time to be a hop farmer."
21 July, 2016
