Writer Hops to itfor Beer-picking HarvestStory by Matthew Spencer |
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THE NEWS OF THIS RARE BREW shines out triumphantly from the Thunderhead Brewing Company’s Web site as owner Trevor Schaben exults about a special beer picked with rare wet hops now being served at his Kearney craft brewpub.
Thunderhead thunders on: “From the fertile plains of Nebraska comes this year’s sense-jarring rendition of Darin’s Dream IPA. Picked fresh by a voluntary army of enthusiasts, this batch is packed with 180 pounds of fresh hop goodness.”
Well, folks, your gallant reporter not only would meet Darin, I helped make his dream come true. For I was part of Trevor’s hops army. But I was hardly a willing volunteer. Let’s just say when the draft beer started flowing, I was drafted into Mr. T’s A-Team, and the rest is hops history.
It all began on an early evening in August outside the Kearney brewpub, where we gathered for Thunderhead’s annual wet hops picking. Being the dedicated journalist I am, I asked Trevor my first probing question. Where are we headed? He giggled and just pointed left.
I was third in line of the caravan, and with Trevor’s Thunderhead beer truck leading the way, the race was on. After keeping up with the Kearney cannonball run, we were soon upon farmland just south of Gibbon.
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The cornfields grew higher and the dust clouds thicker, and I struggled to stay close to the Thunderhead truck’s thunder run, zigging and suddenly sagging on the rough-and-tumble gravel road. But the valiant Nebraska Life battleship refused to sink, and we sailed on. Just before we were about to run into Interstate 80, the smoke cleared, and I spotted Trevor pulling the truck into a cornfield.
Off in the corner was the magic patch that grew Darin Sigler’s dream. Darin, the dream weaver, was standing amongst his towering wet hops plants that looked like a scene from Jack and the Beanstalk. He was busy clipping away at the vines that grow as high as 20 feet, reaching out with pruning shears attached to a stick.
“It was kind of Trevor Schaben/Darin Sigler dream fest one evening about growing hops,” Sigler said. “I’d been doing it in my back yard, just on a small scale. We decided that we’d try it one year. … That fall, when we got the beer finished, it was real good. I could tell it made a difference. I became a small-time hops farmer that day.”
That day was in 2005, and by the next summer, the annual gathering began on about 150 hops hills on this small patch of his family’s farmland near Gibbon. They were pioneers in the use of wet hops, and the Wall Street Journal even reported on their rare technique, which calls for picking the hops and brewing them within a day.
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“Wet hops is a brewing ingredient you use only one time a year,” said the 38-year-old Schaben. “You can only use it right when you pick ’em. After that, you have to process them, which means you gotta dry them out and compress them, and get them down near freezing. And that makes a different tasting beer than a wet hops beer.”
“It just has a fresher, different taste,” Sigler added. “I would think it was more of an aroma that jumps out at you than a regular beer. You just get more of a bouquet.”
