By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER

Ohio Correspondent

MAINEVILLE, Ohio — Craft brewing has revitalized growing hops in Ohio. When Dave and Nina Volkman of Ohio Valley Hops first dabbled in it in 2013, they quickly realized that growing was only one part of the challenge; processing was another.

Harvesters are pricey and, after harvest, the hops must be dried. Dave Volkman designed a portable hops dryer that growers can take to their own farms to dry the crop.

“It is crucial that you get the hops dry and packaged quickly, and there are industry standards about how you do that,” he said.

Those early growers quickly realized they were going to have to invest more money to meet those requirements, Volkman said. At that point, small-scale equipment was not on the market, so growers started experimenting.

“The Ohio crop comes in over the course about six weeks,” he explained. “It’s neat to be able to process the hops at your place, whether it is harvesting or drying or storing them in cold storage before you proceed to pelletizing and packaging them for sale.”

Volkman designed a dryer. A friend, Mike Benoski, a hop grower from Batavia, suggested some improvements. Volkman decided to build the dryer in a trailer so growers could share it.

“It was a matter of trying to find some way to control costs,” he said. “Not everybody has to own everything to do something. We were using that model of a cooperative effort to get one more process done beyond growing the hops.”

With a grant from Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), Volkman bought a trailer and built the dryer inside. He charges other growers just enough to keep the dryer maintained.

“We’ve got a three-stage process,” he said. “Immediately after picking the hops we bring them in here and fill the units, which holds about 1,000 pounds of freshly picked hops. Those hops are coming in at about 75 to 80 percent moisture content. To process them and store them, we need to get them down to about a 10 percent moisture content.”

The first step involves a small grain bin fan. The grower can plug it in or run it off a generator for about 18-24 hours at most. The airflow will bring down the moisture to about 15-18 percent.

“Phase two, we close up the trailer up, close the vent, close the doors, and we have a smaller fan that re-circulates air through the hops. At the same time we turn on the dehumidifier; it’s a big dehumidifier,” Volkman noted. ”It can remove a lot of water quickly.

“Bottom line, we’re done drying hops within about 36 to 48 hours at the most.”

There is a real spirit of camaraderie among Ohio hops growers. Mike Napier of Barn Talk Hops recently picked up Volkman’s dryer from another grower’s farm. That grower had planned on drying his crop, but a family emergency intervened. Napier took the trailer to his farm and dried them for him.

“It worked very well,” Napier said.

Then, when his harvester broke down over the holiday weekend, he called a Cincinnati hops farmer who loaned him a part so Napier could finish getting his crop harvested.

Jenny Napier, Mike’s wife, is on the board of directors of the Ohio Hops Growers Guild (OHGG), which was formed to encourage that spirit of camaraderie and sharing. The group has more than 70 members and they have 50,000 hop plants under cultivation.

Look for the OHGG hops yard at next week’s Farm Science Review in London, Ohio. And for more general information, visit ohgg.org