Ontario District - November Technical Meeting & Master Brewers Association of Canada Annual General Meeting

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Jim Boyd, Yakima Chief, Inc.
Hops; From the Field to Extract

The November meeting's first issue was the travails of various people attempting to get into Toronto as a storm disturbed flights through Chicago and affected ground travel from Detroit through London. Jim Boyd did manage to make it through from Washington State and was joined by 55 others. Jim's presentation on hops was very well received.

Jim worked through an excellent visual CD presentation on hops; interspersed with a good deal of up-to-date hop information and finished with an extensive "hop rub" for everyone to participate in.

The focus was on Washington State where > 75 % of USA hops are grown. Since hops need long sunshine hours with clean, open territory to grow in and lots of water; Washington continues to be one of the world's key hop producing regions. While commercial hops are all female, there is one remote region within Washington state where a 'stud farm' is maintained for males. The cost of hops is closely tied to the high cost of growing hops. Today, it will cost around $3,600US per acre just to 'trellis' the land alone. With yield of hops varying from 600 to 2,400 lbs/acre, varietal cost variances can be large.

Jim worked through aspects such as breeding, propagation of cuttings, greenhouse work, through the very labour intensive aspects of planting new fields, on to the training of hops in the spring. He noted that those who forget to train the young shoots 'clockwise' to the twine will soon find the hops have unwound themselves and are laying in a heap on the ground.

Hop picking advances have helped control costs and the choice of new varieties that pick well is also important. Some very new varieties have shown to be quite prone to self-combustion so careful handling is key today. With hop flowers representing < 15 % of hop vegetative matter, efforts to compost and dispose of the remainder also affect today's hop grower.

From the hop bale on to pellet production, today's hop producer generally blends from 6 to 12 bales of hops together to provide consistency throughout. Modern pellet mills are cooled by liquid nitrogen to keep the hops in best condition; followed by nitrogen evacuation of bags prior to filling pellets. Small pellets have been found to dissolve faster in the kettle and during further processing into hop extract. Hop extracts have been a rapidly expanding aspect of brewing thanks to the use of CO2 - usually under super-critical conditions wherein the CO2 displays properties of both a liquid and a gas. These extracts offer a wide range of advantages when used properly.

The grand finale was the "hop rub" as Jim had brought along "brewer's cuts" of a great many varieties for the assembled crowd to inspect. These days, few brewers are able to make it to the hop harvest so this was a well received event, especially with so very many varieties available to assess and discuss. As well, samples of extracts and tablets were available and Jim also made up a 'tea' or two.

Master Brewers Association of Canada
Annual General Meeting

Committee Reports were presented by the Technical, Social, Curling and Golf committees.

As well, there was the President's Report (on such items as By-Law Review; Fiscal Responsibility; Responsible Use and New Membership); the Vice-President's Report (detailing a healthy increase in membership to 250); Board of Governors report (covering aspects of financial concern, membership, education, scholarships, publications, etc.) and Treasurer's Report.

New Executive were inducted, Update of the Constitution and By-Laws was dealt with; and New Business covered.

Preparations are well under way for the Annual One-Day Technical Conference in Toronto, January 23rd.