Specialty Hops

[Nick]

Hi everyone,

 

I would love some feedback from pro brewers with regards to availability of specialty hops.

 

Specifically, if you had access to aroma hops in leaf form that you currently don't have access to, would you use it and to what extent?

 

I'm thinking of varietals which don't get produced in quantity and are virtually impossible to get in leaf form for dry hopping and hop-back applications.

 

I'm trying to determine if there is a market niche for hand-picked specialty hops and if so, what size this niche is.

 

Seeing that I'm currently living in Canada, I have access to a broad range of rhizomes so suggestions are welcome with regards to varietals, shipping, price expectations, production quantites etc.

 

Thanks in advance :-)

[Kelly Ryan]

Hi Nick,

 

I think the largest hurdle will be NZ's laws on importation of vegetation. It's very difficult to get leaf/flower hops from abroad here and breweries need to be specially licensed to use these. Once the leaf hops are opened, they have to be used all in one go, i.e straight into the kettle.

 

Maybe something to email the NZ Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry about?

 

Cheers,

 

Kelly

[JoKing]

I would actually prefer it that you didn't import any rhizomes from North America.

 

Couple reasons: 1 - all of the hops that are available in Canada / USA are already banked here and have been trialed as to the effective growth in our climate. 2 - all hops up that way carry a raft of diseases that would dessimate our own crops in a single season if infected. In nz, our hop growers don't have to prevent or treat for any of the diseases that North American crops have. If one of the diseases took a holding over here, we could kiss all of our varieties goodbye for a couple years.

 

Just my own personal opinion though...

[Andrew]

I'll 2nd that comment Jo, although very few hop growers are "certified organic" pretty much every one isn't far off it going by legislation around the world so disease from another continent would be a disaster. I don't think you'd have much hope getting them past MAF though...I've seen border patrol and those sniffer dogs don't miss much

[Nick]

I wasn't proposing importing rhizomes lol! I might as well try carrying a bag of pregnant snakes infected with foot and mouth through customs :-)

 

Good point about contacting MAF regarding the importation of flowers. It would be interesting to know why flowers ground up and pressed into pellets makes them acceptable.

 

I would have thought the process of vacuum sealing under nitrogen would be sufficient to kill pretty much any pest that pelletisation would.

[Christian]

My understanding is that the seeds are destroyed or made sterile by the palletisation process.