“I think we have a real good product and that’s the main thing,” the owner of Sartori Hop Ranch said.
So good, his hops are being used in Molson Coors beer.
The local farmer has been growing hops for the last 15 years. The hops field covers maybe 12 acres on his 160-acre farm located at Lindell Beach, a historic farming community within the Columbia Valley.
Sartori produced two main varieties of hops this year: magnum and nugget. They harvest them by hand. Then they’re fed into a machine that Sartori brought over from Germany. The hops are then set out to dry in a special attic drying area, before baling and pelletizing, according to the article written in sookenewsmirror.
“It’s always been a tad challenging growing in the rolling hills of Columbia Valley”, Sartori said, even though he’s been farming here for 40 years.
“There was an opportunity to get into hops and I took it,” Sartori said.
Hops was once the dominant crop in Chilliwack and it brought seasonal work for thousands who would travel to the area at harvest time. By the 1990s that was just a memory, but starting in the mid-2000s hops were growing in Chilliwack again.
The Sartori hops are used by several B.C. breweries, including Molson Coors, as well as craft beer producers.
“You can make a kind of chocolate with it,” he said. “Or tea. It’s good for the stomach or sleeping.”
“It’s kind of neat to be such a small operation in the bush and to get acknowledged by Molson,” Sartori said, remembering the early days of his business relationship with Molson Coors.
“It was excellent. They gave us help when we started. They would buy everything we produced.”
“Local hops cultivated in the province have been an essential ingredient in the brewing of Canadian beers for more than 125 years,” according to a statement from Molson Coors about Sartori hops.
“B.C. has excellent growing conditions, which makes our current partnership with Sartori Hop Ranch very important to preserve the taste of our iconic beers.
“We are proud to use them to make our beers here – and all across Canada.”
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Feinberg/Chilliwack Progress