When we arrived I was greeted by Bill.  He is one of 3 brothers who run BC Hop Farms.  I later met up with Charlie and Bruce.  Bill toured me through operation with great enthusiasm.  I’m assuming this was in part due to the fact that hop harvest is almost done for the season.  However I quickly learned that these 3 brothers have a great passion for hop farming.  Farming is such a thankless job.  Next time you see any farmer out there; give them a big hug!  It might a little awkward, but do it anyways!  After touring the harvesting facility we headed over to the hop kilns and met up with Charlie and Bruce.  Man, I wish I had “Smell-o-vision” for you all, because it smelled so awesome!  They had 6 bins of kilning at various stages of dryness.  Hops will kiln dry till they have about 8-10% moisture.  After the kilns we headed in to check out the bailing facility.  Wow, we walked into a room with mountains of hops that were roughly 20-30 feet high.  I resisted the urge to dive in even though I was encouraged to do so by Bill and Charlie.  After this we headed out to the field where they were just finishing up this year’s Liberty harvest.  It’s quite the operation in the field.  There are 2 guys with hedge trimmers that cruise down the rows and slice the lower part of the trellis.  They are followed by a truck and a “Mad Max” looking machine that chops the vines at the top of the trellis.  All in all BC Hop Farms have 350 acres of hops.  They grow Centennials, Cascades, Nuggets, Willamette’s and Liberty. 

We got back to harvesting facility bagged up 30lbs of Liberty hops as they were just coming off the conveyor to the kiln.  The highlight for me of this whole adventure was all they wanted for the hops were a couple cases of beer!  Frankly this is how I like to do business!  The look on Bill face when I opened the back of truck was great.  You see, a “couple” of cases to me means at least 8 or 9.  I know that I can sleep better at night knowing that when this harvest season is done they’ll be sitting on the porch of their farm house sipping down a cold Widmer Brothers Beer! 

Cheers

Ben

We also put an alert on Facebook to give out some van decorating kits, and we blew through the 200 we had in the first 2 hours! Can’t wait to see everyone’s vans plastered with Widmer Brothers logos.

See you out there. Hood to Prost!

 - There is BenFest on Monday 7/25, held at Grain & Gristle, where myself and a bunch of other brewers named Ben in the Portland area will have some special brews on tap. I’m bringing Friends with BENefits, an aged Russian Imperial Stout with black Benberries. Tasty…

 - Then there is the Timbers game on Tuesday vs. Independiente. Ok, so that isn’t a OCBM event, but I’m RCTID and wouldn’t miss it.

 - Then of course, the granddaddy of all beer festivals, the Oregon Brewers Festival starts on Thursday the 28^th. Can’t wait! This event is killer, year after year. The beer is fantastic, the atmosphere is alive, and looking at the 10 day forecast, the weather looks perfect. We are pouring Foggy Bog Cranberry Ale, a tart cranberry wheat beer. Should be perfect for the warm summer day.

 - After party on Thursday at Fest on the Edge.

 - We wrap it all up with the Plate & Pitchfork dinner at Smith Berry Barn on Sunday the 31^st.

Get out and enjoy Oregon craft beer!

Ben Dobler

Brewer