Taking the Leap Into Hops- Sea Isle Prosecutor Cultivates First Farm of Its Kind in South Jersey
Eric Schmehl and his “best buds.”
Tom Rossi is a bit of a modern-day Renaissance man. Not only is he the prosecutor in Sea Isle City, he is also a general contractor and has his hands in the oyster business. Now, Rossi can add a new vocation to the list. Along with the help of father-son team of Butch and Eric Schmehl, of Hammonton, he has cultivated the first commercial-scale hop farm in South Jersey. After three years of waiting, the bines have reached maturity and the first usable hops will be harvested in August and September.
With 6.3 billion gallons of beer consumed per year in the United States, it would seem that hops would have to be growing everywhere to keep up with demand, but hop farms are not as ubiquitous as one would think. In fact, most of the world’s hops are grown close to the 48th parallel north latitude line, which cuts through the world’s most prolific hop regions: Germany, Czech Republic, and the Yakima and Willamette valleys in Washington and Oregon. New Jersey sits closer to the 40th parallel and lacks any sort of protected valley setting, so though it is slightly out of the sweet spot, it is still a suitable climate for growing the bitter little buds.
More than 20 years ago, Rossi purchased an 11-acre plot of farmland just south of the canal in West Cape May with the intent of starting a small farm that would sell fruits and vegetables to restaurants. He nearly had something going a few years back when he partnered with Lucas Manteca of Quahogs, The Red Store, and Cape May Sea Salt, but both men were too busy to work the farm because of their other ventures, and their farmhand quit in the middle of the first season and Rossi was forced to look for a different option.
That was when Rossi was contacted by a couple from California who had to move to New Jersey for military training, and who had been hop farmers out west. A beer lover himself, Rossi thought it was a great idea and he brought them in. Setting up a hop farm involves much more work than just tilling the soil and planting seeds. These unique plants grow on a bine (yes, bine, not vine like grapes) and can get as tall as 20 feet in length. It requires a sizable up-front investment to drive rows of 20-foot wooden poles with tension cables on top and a new irrigation system. And it takes knowledge, skill and patience to prune the initial clusters of bine shoots from as many as 50 down to three or four per plant, especially when you are talking about 1,500 plants.
Maybe it was the difficult growing conditions, or maybe it was the hard work, but much to Rossi’s dismay, his field managers backed out on him after the first two years and he was left looking for someone to manage the fields once again. On a hunch, he contacted one of the only home-brewing shops in the area – Fermented Food and Beverage Supply in Hammonton – and talked to just the right person: Eric Schmehl.
Schmehl had never grown hops, but his passion for all things related to beer made this an exciting new project for him. Schmehl spent years as a home brewer and also worked in commercial brewing for Tomfoolery Brewing Company in Hammonton. Schmehl left the brewery to open his own home-brewing supply store, but still occasionally guest brews for Tomfoolery.
“The idea of brewing a farm-to-bottle beer was just too good to pass up,” he says.
Schmehl recruited the help of his father, Butch, who spent his life in landscaping, most recently as a greenskeeper at a golf course. “Even though grass grows much differently than hops, a general knowledge of botany and agriculture is better than nothing,” Eric notes.
Since the late spring, the Schmehls have been working at the hop field one or two days a week, dealing with any number of issues. Two days before I arrived at the field, many of the hop bines that had been attached with a piece of twine tied to the tension wire 20 feet in the air had been blown off in a big windstorm. The Schmehls were there with Rossi, climbing up and down a custom-built metal stair ladder, towed on a rolling platform behind a golf cart, retying the broken twine. With 28 rows of hops and several bines broken in each row, they certainly had their work cut out for them, especially because each bine can weigh up to 40 pounds at full maturity.
“Next year we are upgrading to coconut husk ropes, which are a lot stronger,” Rossi yells from atop the platform.
Though hops are fairly hardy once established, they do tend to favor a slightly drier climate, as too much moisture can result in the growth of mildew which ruins the plant for that season.
“It has definitely been a learning process,” Eric Schmehl says. “Some of the varieties like Cascade and Nugget have done pretty well, but the Columbus hops had a tough time with all the rain we had. We had to spray some of the plants with copper sulfate to kill diseases. While we might lose the plant for this year, next year the plant will come back healthy and able to produce.”
Like wine, it takes hop bines 2-3 years to establish a strong root system and then they will produce hop cones with lupulin – the magic ingredient that is extracted during the boiling process and gives beer its aroma, bitterness, and floral/citrusy flavors. By plucking cones and rubbing them in their palms, hop farmers release the true scent of the hop; this is how they know if it is ready to be harvested. At the time of my visit, there were abundant cones on many of the plants, and they were only a few weeks away from picking.
With around 1,500 plants, harvesting the hops by hand is no easy task and will require a lot of friends and volunteers. Each plant has to be cut down and the thousands of cones handpicked from the bine. The cones then have to be thoroughly dried on hand-built wire screens, vacuum sealed and put in the freezer for storage.
“We would like to try to sell some of the hops to the local breweries,” told Rossi, “but we are not sure if their filtration setups will allow for brewing with whole cone hops.” Many breweries use pelletized versions that are first pulverized. “It would be neat if someone could make a wet hop beer with the fresh hops.”
If no one else is up to the task, Schmehl or possibly one of his homebrewing clients will have this unique opportunity to brew with Jersey hops. You never know, this might be the start of the world’s next great hop-growing region, and we might even start to see some barley farms popping up in the future. An all-Jersey beer would be a delight, and a great achievement for the local craft scene.
