AMBOY, Ill. — Hops farms are popping up across the Midwest although Illinois, home to an estimated 225 craft brew pubs, remains very limited in hops production. 

“NASS (USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service) does not collect any data on hops in Illinois,” said Mark Schleusener, Illinois state statistician for USDA-NASS. “The Farm Service Agency (FSA) has some information on acres planted, but there are very few acres registered.”

In 2022, only 31.7 acres were registered with FSA as planted in hops, with 23 of those acres located in LaSalle County. The prior year, only 13.4 acres of hops were FSA-registered in Illinois, Schleusener reported. 

Currently, there are no government or university-based educational programs or support services available for potential hops farmers in Illinois.  

“I am asked about getting started in hops growing maybe two times a year,” said Grant McCarty, a University of Illinois Extension crop educator who, until recently, acted as a liaison and advisor between farmers interested in hops and the Great Lakes Hops Working Group, which provides hops cuttings to growers and premium pelletized hops to craft breweries throughout the Midwest. “I pulled back in 2019 due to turnover in new growers and noticeable decline in stakeholder interest.”

Why the decline in interest? Though hops can be grown in Illinois due to its conducive latitude, the rich, dark soil types inherent to the Midwest are more suited for row crops. It’s also relatively expensive to invest in hops farming; it can require an investment of $10,000 to $12,000 per acre considering machinery, input and trellis system costs. Adding in the risk of disease and insect pressure, many growers come to the conclusion that it’s just too risky to invest in a hopyard. 

However, a handful of devoted hops growers persevere in the Prairie State. In northern Illinois, cousins Anthony Welty and Brian Dallam opened Live Wire Hops (www.LiveWireHops.com) in 2017 with an acre of land and a dream of providing Wisconsin and Illinois craft breweries with locally sourced hops.

“We had absolutely zero experience growing hops,” said Dallam, who grew up on his family’s row crop farm in Amboy, a village of 2,500 in Lee County that is located two hours west of Chicago. “We definitely had a lot of questions in the conversation leading into this.”

The cousins have learned a lot about growing hops in Illinois over the past five years and are happy to share their knowledge with others. “First off, there are some inherent challenges with growing this crop in our climate,” said Welty. “There are reasons the Pacific Northwest (PNW) grows most of the nation’s hops.”

In 2021, Washington state farmers grew about 84.61 million pounds of hops, leading the nation in production. Along with Oregon and Idaho, the trio of states account for around 98 percent of all U.S. hops production. No other state provides more than one percent of total U.S. hops production, according to USDA-NASS. 

“Climate and soil type is part of the issue — there is not a lot of humidity out there like we have in the Midwest, and humidity can breed different types of mildew and disease pressure,” said Dallam. “They also have very sandy, arable soil out there. Hops require a lot of water during the growing cycle, however they don’t like to have soaking-wet root masses. Illinois is known for its good, heavy black soil that is great for row crops, but it’s not as conducive for growing hops as is the lighter, sandy soil of the Pacific Northwest.” 

In terms of latitude, however, Illinois is on par with the PNW states as a prime location for growing hops. “Like the PNW states, we get maximum amounts of sunlight throughout the year. Hops are phototropic in that they can sense the longest day of the year, so your goal is to reach the top wire — or full height — on the summer solstice. The plant will then stop its vertical growth and begin to bush out with the side arms that produce the cones,” Dallam explained.

Unlike traditional row crop farming and its reliable supply chain, Illinois hops farmers must work independently to establish business partnerships in order to sell the cones or pellets they produce. “You’ve got to create your brand, market your brand and build relationships,” Welty said. 

Owners of larger hopyards may also incur expenses associated with purchasing special pelletizing machinery and/or packaging materials for selling their harvested varieties. Though Live Wire Hops dries their own hops after harvest, the cousins have yet to commit to the high costs associated with purchasing pelletizing and packaging machinery. Instead, they sell their hops in cone form to a “partner-grower” in Wisconsin who handles Live Wire’s pelletizing and packaging work. Such partnerships are not uncommon among Midwest hops growers who share machinery and other expenses in an effort to remain profitable.

“We work with a small network of growers here in the Midwest that have a shared interest in marketing and selling the Great Lake Hops proprietary varieties,” said Dallam. “We’ve been very fortunate because there are some very interesting new varieties that we are able to offer through our grow group.”   

Live Wire sells their packaged, pelletized hops to 17 breweries in northern Illinois and south-central Wisconsin. Their varieties include publicly available Cascade and Crystal, along with Mackinac, a Great Lakes proprietary hop. “We’re growing many of the same varieties that are grown in the PNW, but they are distinguished by the fact that they are grown in a Midwest climate, so they are a little different. Just because we’re a small, local grower doesn’t mean that we’re sacrificing anything as far as quality goes,” said Welty.

Hops, a perennial plant, are grown on a trellis system with a series of vertical strings and horizontal wires ascending to around 16 to 20 feet off the ground. Some varieties of hops have a lifespan of 15 to 20 years before they cease to bloom. It can take two or three years for hops to reach full maturity in terms of a plant’s regenerative oils and acidity level.  

“I’ve learned that one of the ways to get the most out of these plants is to slow them down a couple of times, so starting around year three we like to burn them back a little. That way, they come back stronger,” Dallam said. “Once the bines grow up to meet the strings, these plants really start growing. Depending on the variety, we’ve seen them grow as much as 10 inches a day vertically.” 

The hops harvest at Live Wire Hops occurs between mid-August and mid-September. “The harvest wasn’t bad this year, but unfortunately we had a strange wind event in June that tore some buildings down on the farm and snapped some of our plants off at their top growing point. When that happens, they’re done growing vertically. So, two of our varieties only grew to 10 or 12 feet this year, but the Mackinac variety grew straight to the top. Without that it would have been a good production year,” said Dallam. 

Though the 2018 Farm Act emphasized expanding federal crop insurance coverage for specialty crops including hops, Illinois farmers remain ineligible to purchase insurance to cover damages to hops. Losses like the one Welty and Dallam incurred due to a weather emergency have caused other fledgling hops producers to tear down their wires and put their land back into row crops, the cousins vow to keep growing hops for the foreseeable future. 

“Brian and I have had a great time with this and there’s no telling what will occur in the future, but this is really a fun industry and community to be involved with,” said Welty. “We’re small, but we have every intention of continuing with what we call ‘the experiment.’”

Around 115.6 million total pounds of hops were produced in the U.S. in 2021, an increase of almost 12 million pounds from 2020 and an all-time U.S. production record. The 2021 value of hops production for the U.S. totaled $662 million, NASS reported. 

Hops earned U.S. farmers an average of $5.72 per pound in 2021, according to Statista.com.