Hop-ing back in: Darin Sigler back to growing hops - in Schuyler

Years ago, Schuyler’s Darin Sigler started growing a rather unconventional crop in Gibbon as part of a homebrewing experiment.

Hops, a necessary ingredient in beer, are not exactly a common plant around Nebraska today, and never really have been. Nevertheless, he grew them, and recently, picked it back up after years out of the game.

“I lived there — had a family farm in the Gibbon area. I partnered with a friend who had a brewery in Kearney, Thunderhead Brewery,” Sigler said. “It was kind of discovery as an experiment, basically, to see if they would grow, to see what would happen more than anything.”

His interest first stemmed from homebrewing, Sigler said. He wanted to grow a plant that was part of the brewing process for beer. Barley — his other option — requires a malting process to be usable in beer. That is a lot of work beyond the growing, harvesting and prepping processes, Sigler said, so he went for hops.

Hops, Sigler explained, are a perennial plant and require a couple of years to really get going. While the bines (hollow stems) grow fast after the first year, the very first yield will be small and short, if anything. Sigler said his first harvest produced good information.

“It was a small garden, passion kind of thing. I found a couple variants that grew pretty well so when we were able to harvest a very small harvest and use it in a beer they were making that fall, it made a difference,” Sigler said. “It was something different. You could tell we used fresh hops from the field, what we call aroma hops, in the beer.”

Hops, Sigler said, are grown in an unusual way. Unlike corn or soybeans, they grow in a long bine upward, sometimes up to 20 feet, on a string connected to a trellis system. They have to be harvested by hand and often are transported to a harvesting facility where they can be processed from the bine. The variant he likes to grow are called cascade hops and are processed in a hopster, a portable picking and sorting machine.

“The machine is like a combine. It’s a very impressive design. It separates the hops from the leaves, collects the cones. The batch has to be ready after harvest and they (brewers) would rather have them dried down, densified in some way. They don’t like to use dry flowers, because it can mess with the equipment,” Sigler said.

Greg and Chelsea Jeffery of Skybound Hops in Lincoln have worked with hops since 2017 and have worked with Sigler and Thunderhead in the past. Growing hops, Greg said, is not exactly easy or cheap and, as Sigler said, a passion project for many growers. If one manages to get past the $10,000-12,000 start-up cost and has space and time to dedicate to growing them, however, they may find success.

“This is not a crop you sit and watch grow. There’s a lot of manual labor involved. You still have to check for pests, fungus, make sure there’s no nutrient deficiencies, scouting the field, making sure that’s OK, watching the weather to be proactive so you’re not spraying stuff you don’t need. There’s certain pests when there’s certain weather at certain times of year,” Greg said.

After seven years of growing, Sigler’s job moved to Columbus and his family then moved to Schuyler. Not having the yard or the help harvesting and being unable to bring his plants with him, he had to take a break from growing.

“I followed my paycheck to this neighborhood, bought a house in Schuyler and always had it in the back of my mind that if I could find a spot in Schuyler or in my neighborhood, I’d try to do it again,” Sigler said.

Years back, Sigler said, an opportunity arose that started steering him back toward hops. A portable harvesting machine, which were stationary back when he used to grow, went up for sale.

“I found one used in Colorado in my price range and I knew at the time if I didn’t act on it, I probably never would have one,” Sigler said. “I bought it before I had place to grow the hops, but I knew of a place in Schuyler I had an eye on.”

The late Jim Kluck once owned a nursery in downtown Schuyler that his brother, Tom, took over after his passing. Tom, Sigler said, was kind enough to let him rent out some space for his hops. A friend in Cozad had some plants left from his son’s Future Farmers of America project, so he was able to fast-track the starting stages.

“It’s a perfect setup. I live in Schuyler basically right across town. It has everything I need. Last fall about this time, I started establishing the yard,” Sigler said. “You have the trellis system and once you get the system, with hops being perennial, all the work is on the front end, getting everything set up and established. You have to work hard to get it established. It takes about three years.”

He’s already harvested his first crop for this batch, around Labor Day, and will have to wait for next year’s shoots to start growing. As for the future, he plans to keep his operation relatively small because it’s a lot of work to do by himself even with the harvesting machine and he doesn’t want to go commercial-scale with it.

With relatively few hop yards in the state and a lot more breweries than there used to be, he said, it’s more about the Nebraska connection than the yield. With more breweries than ever, he can be connected to a lot of Nebraskan beer, even with a smaller yard.

“I don’t have any intention to get very much bigger. What I have probably won’t get much bigger, because of the labor it takes. I don’t want to grow beyond what I can take care of. It’s a passion, I guess. I enjoy that part of agriculture. I like to make something connected to Nebraska.”

Link to News Article: https://columbustelegram.com/news/local/darin-sigler-hops-backbone/article_91170942-6499-11ee-ab5a-d72a9fbed733.html