E-Malt.com News article: Canada, Ont.: Hops growing remarkably well in downtown Toronto

By seeding downtown rooftops with beer ingredients, a Toronto microbrewery is giving new meaning to the term “local beer”, National Post reported on July, 27.

Soon after moving in to their Argyle and Ossington location, Bellwoods Brewery owners Mike Clark and Luke Pestl approached neighbours with a simple proposal: Provide the pair with space for a roof garden, and in return they would be invited to the occasional cask-drinking party.

Seamlessly blending the Torontonian love of urban gardening and craft brewing, it was an easy sell, and eight homes and businesses soon signed up for what became known as the City Hops program. “It’s just a science project,” says Mr. Clark. “But we could see it turning into something bigger.”

Bellwoods’ rooftop hops empire includes Ossington’s I Deal coffee shop and Parks&Rec, a rooftop garden atop Parts and Labour, a Parkdale restaurant and bar. By 2012, the brewers aim to install additional hop gardens on Wychwood Barns and Evergreen Brickworks, two Toronto-area community centres.

Hops, it turns out, grow remarkably well in downtown Toronto. With only a minimum of watering and tending, the brewers have found their plants grow upwards of 20 feet long — nearly twice their initial expectations. Next year, once the gardens are equipped with wooden trellising, Mr. Clark expects the hops to stretch to lengths of up to 30 feet — about the length of a bus. “They just explode out of the ground,” says Mr. Clark.

Both Mr. Clark and Mr. Pestl are recent veterans of the brew rooms of Toronto’s Amsterdam Brewing Company. In their pre-beer days, however, both men trained as scientists. Mr. Pestl has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Western Ontario and Mr. Clark has a biochemistry degree from Dalhousie University. “They’re really into data,” says Katie Mathieu, a gardener at Parks&Rec. The two brewers have meticulously plotted the plant’s water intake, charted average daily temperature and kept intricate photo diaries of the budding green flowers.

For every square metre of rooftop soil, estimates Mr. Clark, Bellwood’s gardens can raise enough hops to produce a keg of beer. It is more than enough for an amateur homebrewer, but nothing near the quantities needed for a full-time craft brewer. “We never went into this thinking that it would produce enough hops for large batches, we just liked the idea of prettying urban spaces,” says Mr. Clark. For now, like most brewers, Bellwoods sources their hops from a network of growers in Europe and the Northwestern United States. However, they are in talks to secure a local supplier among Ontario’s burgeoning hops producers.

Once their rooftop hops are fully matured, Bellwoods has arranged to send a few samples to the University of Toronto to make sure the plants have not absorbed too much of the city’s infamous smog. Once laboratory technicians give them the all-clear, the brewery hopes to whip up a few test casks of locally hopped beer by autumn.

Historically, Canadian breweries used to grow many of their ingredients onsite, but the practice was gradually phased out as breweries became industrialized in the 1930s. Urban hops gardening, in particular, underwent a renaissance during prohibition, when many of Canada’s illicit homebrewers began seeding their backyards with hops rhizomes. Lately, as the local food movement gains traction, a growing number of microbreweries have been reviving the practice by opening small agricultural side projects. Hops growing matches well with Bellwoods’ vintage ethos. The brewery’s first run of promotional posters were prepared using movable type and, like a 19th century medicine show, the owners promise a selection of “fermented elixirs” in addition to beer.

The doors at Bellwoods remain locked throughout the summer as Mr. Clark and Mr. Pestl prepare their first pilot brews. The combination brewery, retail store and cafe is expected to open in late 2011.


29 July, 2011