Take your home-brewing to the next level with fresh-foraged, local hops. 

• Erin Moore
• Cone-shaped hops add distinct flavors to beers and other brewed beverages.

Editor's note: The following article was originally published as part of City Weekly's 2024 Beer Issue.

Want a cold pint with a dash of botanical mystery and Utah history? Try local hops. Getting access to fresh hops through foraging or gardening has gotten more popular in the last few years in the local brewing community, and we're here to tell you about it, with the help of some local home brewers.

What are local hops?
If you've ever thought a hoppy beer or hop water had a floral taste, you'll be pleased to know that your taste buds are working well—hops are technically the cone-shaped flower of the prolific climber vine Humulus lupulus. What local hops are depends on how you get your hands on them.

If you're growing them in your garden, you need specialized varieties that you can buy and plant as rhizomes, root-like systems which grow prolifically. Ever heard of a "Citra IPA?" That kind of beer gets its distinct flavor from Citra hops, a variety that also grows well in Utah. It also grows well in the backyard of local home brew enthusiasts John Howa and Sonia Hernandez.

The pair's homegrown bines—the sticky, hairy vines that hop cones flower from—sprawl across an old clothesline, appearing at first glance like grape vines, or maybe ivy. On closer inspection in mid-July, however, the young hop flowers distinguish the plant.

Hernandez and Howa can't remember what they planted next to the Citra—Columbus, Cascade or CTZ. Either way, it's these Pacific Northwest varieties that can manage the Utah climate. That's something Howa says he learned the hard way when he started growing hops in 2009.

"I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. The Germans know what they're doing. I'm going to do what they do," he explained of his initial plantings of German hops.

As it turns out, the Germans didn't know that their hops don't grow well here. Now we all know.

When/where to harvest hops?
When not intentionally planted, hops can be found in the wild. In the high, cool places around Summit County and Park City in the summer, wild hops grow like crazy around abandoned mines and miners' camps.

Local lore tells that wild hops came to Utah by way of German immigrant miners hoping to brew their beloved beverage.

But Howa couldn't grow German hops here, and neither can other folks, which has led some to believe that the hops the Germans were tending to and whose perennial ancestors live on in Utah weren't German hops at all, but native, or at least a German-native hybrid.

Only DNA testing could solve that mystery, but in the meantime, whatever they are, they're good, and you can brew beer with them.

Every summer, the local land advocacy group Summit Land Conservancy teams up with Top of Main Brew Pub to lead foraging groups to look for hop spots located around the Park City area for harvesting at the end of summer.

Most of their scouting trips are done for the season—an August 14 excursion concluded just prior to press time—but look for their TBA hops harvest at the end of summer/beginning of fall, when hops are prime for brewing.

• Erin Moore
• Hops grow on sprawling, sticky plants known as bines.

Why harvest your own hops?
If you're not a brewer, you're probably wondering why people go to the effort to search for these things in the wild, or to tame them in their yards. If you are a brewer, you already know.

It's because fresh hops are a temporal treat in the brewing world—as an ingredient in beer, they contribute a lip-smacking freshness, leading many to dub IPAs brewed with them as "juicy" or "wet-hopped."

And while you may question, "isn't all beer wet?" a fresh-hopped IPA really does taste, well, wetter—especially opposed to standard brewed IPAs, which can be more bitter or dry.

How to hop?
Whether you grow or forage, getting hops ain't easy.

In Howa and Hernandez's garden, it requires springtime pruning to get the plants to their healthiest for the growing season.

"We didn't trim the hops at all at the beginning of the this year," Hernandez said. So when it came time to reel the plant in later, she ended up with what felt like a really bad sunburn all over her arms, thanks to plunging into the rough, sticky-ish bines that easily cling to the ground, fences, walls, other plants, internet provider cables and the exposed skin of hops enjoyers.

So when it comes to harvesting hops, it requires more than clippers and a bag to carry the bounty in—it means covering your skin and getting anything out of the way that the bines could cling to.

Once collected, it's best to use them fresh. After the annual group harvests held by Summit Land Conservancy, the brewers at Top of Main Brew Pub get to immediate work, throwing the bounty into their annual specialty brew.

But they can't just be thrown in the same way dried hops are. If brewed wrong, or too long, they can make a beer taste like what Howa describes as "vegetal." The delicate, fresh hops are best used as a last-minute additive boiled into the brew for a very short time at the very end of the process. Done right, the unsavory compounds are eliminated, leaving the pleasant aromatic flavors of the fresh hops.

Howa's own experiments have gone awry, but he knows how others get it to work. "These like, really heavy, juicy IPA-type things, they're usually commercially grown, very specifically harvested at exactly the right time for hops," he said, "and then they just throw it in for like, a minute or two. And then just immediately pull it out."

If you're a homebrewer looking for a new challenge, take this as your sign to dive into the world of hops, fresh off the bine.

• Courtesy Photo
• John Howa and Sonia Hernandez grow and harvest their own hops.

Where to forage
To get a crash course on how and where hops grow in the Summit County area, you can go on one of the group hikes and harvesting events that are offered by Summit Lands Conservancy, where you will find that hops are very common in open, wild spaces as much as they are in old mine camps.

Some report finding them growing in people's yards on garages, chimneys or fences, on the sides of footpaths like the Rail Trail in Park City and other human-disturbed spaces. Until you can find your own hop spot, check out Summit Land Conservancy's guided hikes at wesaveland.org/hops-hunters.

Get your gear (and rhizomes)
Whether you want to try homebrewing with wild hops or want to try growing your own bines, you can get what you need at The Beer Nut, SLC's one-stop shop for everything home brew. Not only do they have equipment, ingredients, kits and knowledgeable staff for more standard brewing projects, they even have a variety of hop plant rhizomes you can peruse online for your own planting at beernut.com.

If you want to go full DIY, seek out hops plants with the tips above and pull your own cutting from the underground rhizome and try transplanting it in your garden. Get tips on how to make your planting a success from USU Extension's Yard and Garden section at extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/hops-in-the-garden.

More hoppin' ideas
Beer not your thing? If you get your hands on fresh hops, they're also great in cider, which is also more straightforward to make than beer. If you want something that is alcohol-free, infusing hops into a shrub could be a tasty spin on an easygoing treat—mash sugar together with some fruit, veggies and/or herbs, top with a good quality apple cider vinegar, let it sit out for a day, then strain it off and pour to taste into sparkling waters, salad dressings, etc.

There are also recipes online for concocting your own hop water—maybe the quenchiest new bev in the NA world.