Local hops for local beer
The hops in your beer – a beverage made with only water, grain, yeast and the vibrant green cone-shaped flowers – are more than likely sourced from Germany or the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
That is, unless it so happens you’re drinking a beer from Barnside Brewing tucked into a forest off Regional Road 10 in St-Eugène.
Turn down the gravel driveway that’s been cut through the trees, and the rails and poles and ropes of the towering trellis structure on which farmers Danick Lafond and Natalie Chapados grow their hops are immediately visible.
Over the past week or two, however, the trellises have been picked clean of the year’s harvest and, after drying in the barn, some of the hops will head to London Brewing, 700 kilometres away, or to Broken Stick Brewing Company, about an hour’s drive to Hammond.
“That makes it a really local brewery,” says Lafond. “We call ourselves a farmstead brewery.”
The neighbourhood local
Built within the trees near the barn is the Barnside taproom with a concrete-topped bar with room for eight people and four beers on tap, a retail cooler with cans of beer made with Barnside hops, a display of some salty snacks and several tables and chairs.
The venue has become something of the neighbourhood local for area residents to visit for a pint and conversation: on tap currently are a lager, Pilsner and Front Porch, an IPA, by London Brewing.
There’s also available Broken Light, a light lager at 3.5% ABV made by Broken Stick Brewing in Hammond.
Pinned to a board behind the taps are dozens of numbered green tags – the ear clips used for animal identification numbers on cattle, a suitable agrarian theme here – for members of the “Barnsiders club:” for $75, as a member you receive your own Barnside beer stein filled with a complimentary beer, a Barnside ball cap and discounted pricing on a 20-oz beer.
Lafond and Chapados both have PhDs in health sciences and backgrounds in research, and they have put in a decade or so researching hops.
Their crops have been used commercially for the last several years, but they only formally opened the taproom at the end of June.
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