An adventure into Beerland
An adventure into Beerland
Life in the 'Beer Capital' of NZ, harvesting beer raw ingredients in order to occasionally pay for a glass of beer.
On the adventure radar: taking some time on the Abel Tasman Track and cruising to Fiji with a well-known New Zealander. But first: beer. Kind of. A few words about my experiences working on the hop harvest.
On day one, the hops stank of beer. The shed stank of beer. Everything stank of beer.
On day two, my car stank of hops. It then rained hard and washed the smell off everything. Even the plants. Everything now smells of feijoa to me. It could have been worse: everything could smell and taste of pool chemicals, like that time I got Covid. That was wretched. For two years, they promised we’d lose our sense of taste if we caught it. By the time my turn came, it had morphed into a yucky ammonia harmonia. On the plus side, I can now take any pungent smell the world throws at me.
It’s hard to look past Tasman District’s Moutere and Motueka as New Zealand's ‘Beer Capital’. If you ignore the never-ending rows of apples, pears, olives, grapes and, er, feijoa, you’ll convince yourself they only grow hops around here. Tall vines with those unmistakable green flowers line six out of every seven of those long, straight roads. Huge sheds burn the midnight oil throughout March, turning those little heads into brewer’s potpourri. It’s a fascinating process. One which is reliant on both humans and machines.
First up is the puller. A tractor, fitted with a special pair of scissors on the front, drives down the rows snipping the bottom of the vines. A device on the tractor’s right shoulder then snares the plant and pulls it with the tractor, simultaneously snapping the twine that secures it to the top wire, while loading it into the trailer behind. When the trailer is full, it’s carted off to the shed. Here, people known as hookers hang each plant on an inverted conveyor belt, which rises high up to the ceiling, before entering a giant munching machine. A mesh of metal claws then tears the helpless flowers from the plant. The remainder of the plant is dumped out the back, but a small piece of vine sometimes remains on the conveyor hooks as they come back around. The shredded, chewed up twig is reminiscent of something from a Jurassic Park feeding scene.
The loose flowers are fed to the kiln loaders, who pack up a tray and get them dried. The output is mountains and mountains of brown-green flower heads, which are then baled or turned into hop pellets.
That’s ever-so-roughly the process. The romanticised images of people picking hops into baskets somewhere in Europe are confined to history. In this region, the maturity of the hops means this must happen sometime in the first three weeks of March. In other words: quickly. Countless breweries depend on Kiwi hops, local and afar. From the pub just up the road, to a craft beer stockists in southeast London, the hops of Tasman end up being consumed around the globe. I'm sure there's an expert opinion on the specific aroma Kiwi hops bring to the brew, but I wouldn't pretend to know. They're a revered ingredient, that's for sure.
So, that’s my story from Beerland, where Farmer Dunc is currently hiding out. The outdoor adventures continue next month with a five-day slow trek through the Abel Tasman National Park. Plus, can you guess who I’ll be heading to Fiji with this June? More on that in a future edition!