{"product_id":"the-hop-growers-handbook-the-essential-guide-for-sustainable-smallscale-production-for-home-and-market-9781603585552","title":"The Hop Grower's Handbook: The Essential Guide for Sustainable  Small-Scale Production for Home and Market","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith information on siting  planting  tending  harvesting  processing  and brewing Its hard to think about beer these days without thinking about hops.  The runaway craft beer markets convergence with the ever-expanding local foods movement is helping to spur a local-hops renaissance. The demand from craft brewers for local ingredients to make beersuch as hops and barleyis robust and growing. Thats good news for farmers looking to diversify  but the catch is that hops have not been grown commercially in the eastern United States for nearly a century.  Today  farmers from Maine to North Carolina are working hard to respond to the craft brewers desperate call for locally grown hops. But questions arise: How best to create hop yardsvirtual forests of 18-foot poles that can be expensive to build? How to select hop varieties  and plant and tend the bines  which often take up to three years to reach full production? How to best pick  process  and price them for market? And  how best to manage the fungal diseases and insects that wiped out the eastern hop industry 100 years ago  and which are thriving in the hotter and more humid states thanks to climate change? Answers to these questions can be found in The Hop Growers Handbookthe only book on the market about raising hops sustainably  on a small scale  for the commercial craft beer market in the Northeast.  Written by hop farmers and craft brewery owners Laura Ten Eyck and Dietrich Gehring  The Hop Growers Handbook is a beautifully photographed and illustrated book that weaves the story of their Helderberg Hop Farm with the colorful history of New York and New England hop farming  relays horticultural information about the unusual hop plant and the mysterious resins it produces that give beer a distinctively bitter flavor  and includes an overview of the numerous native  heirloom  and modern varieties of hops and their purposes. The authors also provide an easy-to-understand explanation of the beer-brewing processcritical for hop growers to understand in order be able to provide the high-quality product brewers want to buyalong with recipes from a few of their favorite home and micro-brewers.  The book also provides readers with detailed information on:  Selecting  preparing  and designing a hop yard site  including irrigation;  Tending to the hops  with details on best practices to manage weeds  insects  and diseases; and   Harvesting  drying  analyzing  processing  and pricing hops for market.  The overwhelming majority of books and resources devoted to hop production currently available are geared toward the Pacific Northwests large-scale commercial growers  who use synthetic pesticides  fungicides  herbicides  and fertilizers and deal with regionally specific climate  soils  weeds  and insect populations. Ten Eyck and Gehring  however  focus on farming hops sustainably. While they relay their experience about growing in a new Northeastern climate subject to the higher temperatures and volatile cycles of drought and deluge brought about by global warming  this book will be an essential resource for home-scale and small-scale commercial hops growers in all regions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646836432949,"sku":"ByrdShop_1603585559","price":25.76,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781603585552.jpg?v=1781679009","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-hop-growers-handbook-the-essential-guide-for-sustainable-smallscale-production-for-home-and-market-9781603585552","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}