Hoppy St. Lupulin’s Day

June 1, 2011 By Jay Brooks

Today, two years ago, Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado released a new seasonal beer, an Extra Pale Ale they called “St. Lupulin.”

From the press release:

A mystical legend in the Odell brewhouse, St. Lupulin (loop-you-lin) was the archetypal hophead. He devoted endless summers to endless rows of hops, tending to the flowers and the beloved resin within — lupulin. Extraordinary oils in this yellow resin provide this dry-hopped extra pale ale with an undeniably pleasing floral aroma. “St. Lupulin is our way of honoring the hop plant,” said brewer Jake O’Mara. “The beer has incredible hop character, but it’s balanced and very drinkable.”

I mention all this because I absolutely love the label artwork they came up with and just the idea of having a St. Lupulin. He looks to me like the Johnny Appleseed of hops. So since June 1st is the release date, I’m declaring that June 1 also be the feast day for St. Lupulin, patron saint of American hops. No reason we can’t have yet another beer saint, even a fictional one. We should come with our own myth for him, a tall tale. Happy St. Lupulin’s Day everyone. Enjoy a hoppy beer to celebrate.

Beer In Art #118: Frank Waller’s Harvesting Hops

March 13, 2011 By Jay Brooks

art-beer
This week’s work of art is by New York artist Frank Waller, a founding member of the Art Students’ League in 1875. The painting, Harvesting Hops Near Cooperstown, New York, was completed in 1884 and today hangs in the Fenimore Art Museum.

Frank_Waller-harvesting_hops

The Fenimore also has a short biography of Waller:

A nineteenth century American painter, educator and etcher, Frank Waller (1842-1923) began his career as a businessman. In 1870, however, he traveled to Rome to study art under John G. Chapman. For the next several years Waller traveled extensively in both Europe and Egypt. Upon his return to the United States he became a founding member of New York’s influential Art Students’ League (1875) and served as its first president. As well, Frank Waller served as honorary secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund Society. He was also a noted architect and a Fellow of both the Academy of Design and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NOSB Unanimously Votes That Organic Beer Should Include 100% Organic Hops

October 28, 2010 By Jay Brooks

usda-organic
I just heard that the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) earlier today voted unanimously “to require organic beer to include 100% organic hops beginning January 1, 2013.” If you haven’t been following this, under current USDA guidelines, a beer can be labeled “organic” if 95% of its ingredients are organic. Since less than 5% of beer consists of hops, that means almost any beer using organic malt may be called an organic beer. If a brewery uses 100% organic ingredients, they may label that beer “100% organic,” but all but the most savvy consumers are unaware of the difference. And it’s hard to argue that the current standard doesn’t cause confusion. I think most people who see a product labeled “organic” are going to assume that it’s all organic, not just mostly organic. There are actually four ways that beer can be labeled “organic” which includes the two I just mentioned plus “Made with Organic Ingredients” and “Some Organic Ingredients.” You can see the different standards at a post I did several Years ago, What Makes Beer Organic? The last two seem to convey the intended information, and so does saying “100%.” It’s that simple “organic” designation being only 95% that has people concerned — rightly so, I should add — and led the American Organic Hop Grower Association (AOHGA) to petition the USDA to “remove hops from the National List of non-organic ingredients allowed in organic food (section 205.606).” You can view the petition, and an addendum, at the AOGHA website.

Here’s some of the background, from an AOGHA press release:

Hops were first added to the National List by the NOSB in June 2007, when organic hops were primarily produced in Europe and New Zealand. Since then, the U.S. organic hop industry has made significant advances. Progressive, large-scale family farms in the Pacific Northwest and small, local growers across the country are now growing organic hops, even though the hop producers believe the market for them has remained weak due to the current NOSB policy which allows brewers to use less expensive, non-organic hops in their beer labeled organic.
In an attempt to remove hops from the National List, the American Organic Hop Grower Association (AOHGA) submitted a petition to the USDA in December 2009, supported by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, Lakefront Brewery, Seven Bridges Cooperative, and Hopunion LLC.

When the USDA denied the petition, BT Loftus Ranches VP Patrick Smith wrote an impassioned essay, National Organic Standards Board to US Organic Hop Industry: “Drop Dead”, that nicely laid out the organic hop farmers’ case. In the middle of October, “thanks to his efforts, and the attendant “response from consumers, organic hop growers, and organic brewers, the NOSB Handling Committee has revised their previous recommendation and is now recommending that hops come off the National List on January 1, 2013.” Good news, to be sure, but it still required the full board of NOSB board vote on the petition again and accept the changed recommendation at a meeting in Madison today, as reported by Patrick Smith in an Organic Hops Update.

organic-beer

The AOHGA website is now updated with the following: “On October 28, 2010, the National Organic Standards Board unanimously voted in favor of the removal of hops from section 205.606 of the National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances, effective January 1, 2013.”

Beer In Art #98: Tompkins Matteson’s Harvesting Hops

October 17, 2010 By Jay Brooks

art-beer
Today’s art is a beautiful painting by American artist Tompkins H. Matteson. The title of the painting is Harvesting Hops and the original is at the Museum of Art for the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York. Matteson was born about thirty miles from Utica, in Peterboro, New York in 1813. This painting was done in 1863 so presumably it’s depicting a hop harvest in upstate New York.

Tompkins_Matteson-hops
Click through the painting to see a larger image to see all the detail in it.

As one source explains, “the various stages involved in harvesting hops have been painted in meticulous detail. Buildings with chimneys typical of breweries can be seen in the background on the right, but the subject is merely the pretext to depict a highly sentimental rural scene.” But I don’t think the author of that commentary is very familiar with what breweries look like, because the buildings he’s referring to look more like hop kilns than breweries, which makes a lot more sense, too, in the context of the painting. Not to mention that the horse-drawn cart appears to laden down with hop bales.

You can see more of Tompkins Harrison Matteson’s art at American Gallery, ArtCyclopedia, AskArt. For a short biography, try Arader’s Galleries or Answers.com.

Picking Hops In The Moonlight

September 6, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Yesterday, we took our annual family-outing to pick hops at Moonlight Brewery in Sonoma County, California. Founder and brewmaster Brian Hunt has a quarter-acre he planted several years ago after Vinnie Cilurzo, from Russian River Brewing, had to pull out the hops he had at Korbel when he moved the brewery to Santa Rosa. Russian River’s now growing their own and Moonlight has continued to keep his hopfield going, using the hops primarily to brew his fresh hop beer Homegrown.

I’ve been volunteering to help pick hops for a number of years now, and began taking the family a few years ago, recreating how it would have been done in he later Nineteenth century before hops were harvested using machinery. In those days, the entire community would turn out to pick the hops, with the men working the fields, women putting on lavish picnic spreads (and helping with the picking) and the kids pitching in andalso playing among the hopvines. It’s great fun and really does feel like the community coming together to help out. Everyone does their part, and we all talk and laugh while sitting in the circle and picking the hops.

The Abbey de St. Humulus hop field, a.k.a. Moonlight Brewery

Through the hop field
The beautiful green of hops in the field, ripe for the picking.

My daughter Alice outstanding in her field … hop field, that is.

Hops as far as the eye can see
Hops on the vine, as far as the eye can see.

Hops flowers on the vine
A close-up of the hop cones, the flowers that will be picked and added to the beer.

The the clipping are bundled up, as demonstrated here by Brian Hunt
Moonlight brewmaster Brian Hunt holding a bundle of hops, freshly cut down for picking.

Picking the hops
The hopvines are placed in the center of a circle, where people work on each vine, pulling the hops off by hand and putting them into a plastic bucket.

My wife Sarah and her hop vine
My wife Sarah showing off her hop-picking skills.

Below is a slideshow of our family outing to pick hops. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.

And below is a short video of cutting down the hops and taking them to be picked.

Beer In Art #46: Christopher Nevinson’s The Hop Fields

October 4, 2009 By Jay Brooks

art-beer
Today’s artist is a British Futurist named Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson. While many of his paintings and illustrations appear to tackle more contemporary themes like urban life and World War I, he did paint some more idyllic landscapes like The Hop Fields.

Nevinson_hop-fields

In fact, his most striking images are almost all the war paintings, showing the unpleasantness of modern warfare. That seems somewhat ironic, as the Futurist movement he is associated with was about making a break with the old and changing the future, more of a political and societal movement rather than one concerned with paintings styles. But I suppose despite World War I being the first modern war, war itself is one of mankind’s oldest instincts revealing its horrors is in keeping with Futurist ideals.

It’s unclear when Nevinson painted The Hop Fields during his career, or where exactly it was done. But it certainly seems right at home during the Arts & Crafts movement that ended around 1910. The hops themselves seem a little thin, but I like that you can see the round buildings in the distance through the vines. You can even buy a print of the The Hop Fields at Bridgeman Art On Demand.

Nevinson’s biography from Wikipedia:

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (13 August 1889 – 7 October 1946) was an English painter. He is often referred to by his initials C. R. W. Nevinson. He was the son of the famous war correspondent and journalist Henry Nevinson and the suffrage campaigner Margaret Nevinson. Educated at Uppingham School, which he hated, Nevinson went on to study at the St John’s Wood School of Art. Inspired by seeing the work of Augustus John, he decided to attend the Slade School of Art, part of University College London. There his contemporaries included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash and Dora Carrington. Gertler was, for a time, his closest friend and influence, but they subsequently fell out when both men fell in love with Carrington.
On leaving the Slade, Nevinson befriended Marinetti, the leader of the Italian Futurists, and the radical English writer and artist Percy Wyndham Lewis. However, Nevinson fell out with Lewis and other ‘rebel’ artists when he attached their names to the Futurist movement. Lewis went on to found the Vorticists, from which Nevinson was excluded (though he is said to have coined the title for the Vorticists’ famous magazine, Blast).
At the outbreak of World War I, Nevinson joined the Friends’ Ambulance Brigade with his father, and was deeply disturbed by his work tending wounded French soldiers. For a brief period he served as a volunteer ambulance driver, before ill health forced his return to England. He used these experiences as the subject matter for a series of powerful paintings which used Futurist techniques to great effect. Subsequently appointed an official war artist, his later paintings lacked the same powerful effect. A large collection of his work can be found in the Imperial War Museum in London.
Shortly after the end of the war, Nevinson traveled to New York, where he painted a number of powerful images of the city. However, his boasting, and exaggerated claims of his war experiences, together with his depressive and temperamental personality, made him many enemies, in both the USA and England. Roger Fry of the Bloomsbury Group was a particularly virulent critic.
Nevinson was credited with holding the first cocktail party in England in 1924 by Alec Waugh

The first cocktail party in England? How cool is that?

There’s also biographies of Nevinson at Modern British Artists and also at Encyclopedia.com.

You can also see additional pieces by Nevinson at ArtCyclopedia, Artnet, Bridgeman, at the Tate Collection, and the The World Images Kiosk at UC Berkeley.

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