When you look at the top restaurants around the world, no matter what cuisine they may focus on, there’s one commonality they all share, and that’s deep relationships with those who grow and raise the very best ingredients. It’s the same in beer—you can’t be the best at what you do without the meaningful, personal, financial, and long-standing relationships that ensure the brewery has access to the very best quality ingredients. These relationships don’t materialize overnight, but for Firestone Walker, they’re the product of 30 years of work. In this series, we highlight a number of these crucial growers, brokers, and processors who have played a role in the world-class beer that Firestone Walker makes.
Episode One: Quality Is a Verb
You don’t get great hops by accident, and the work doesn’t start with selecting them from brokers’ lots. The work starts with breeding the right hop varieties with the perfect mix of aroma and flavor compounds as well as the functional things that make them viable to grow as a commercial crop—disease resistance, robust hop-cone production, lower water and fertilizer needs, and more. Since its inception, Firestone Walker has been involved with the Hop Quality Group—an industry group of craft brewers who work cooperatively to help guide how the growers grow and process hops. In this episode, Firestone Walker Propagator brewer Sam Tierney and friend Patrick Chavanelle, head of R&D for Allagash Brewing, outline the work of this important group in developing new, modern hops that any grower can grow.
Episode Two: Deep Roots and Twisting Bines
One of the keys to maintaining a consistent supply of the very best hops is long-term relationships and deep commitment paired with the very best analytical science and process improvement, and the purpose of this series is to explore just what that means with some of the key players in this story of ingredient quality. In this episode, Firestone Walker head brewer Dustin Kral and Bud Hollingbery of hops broker Hollingbery & Son talk about the way that Hollingbery has worked closely with Firestone Walker for decades to source and process hops, how current dynamics in the brewing and hop industries are impacting hop growers, and a lot more. Over the years, Bud has seen some remarkable change in the hop industry, and he’s not afraid to tell you exactly what he thinks.
Episode Three: Anywhere & Everywhere
In this third episode of the Source Material series, we look at the international reach of hops with which Firestone Walker brews and head to New Zealand for a conversation with Brent McGlashen of Mac Hops, part of the bigger NZ Hops collective. Brent’s family has been farming hops down in Motueka for five generations, and their two farms produce quite a bit of the New Zealand hops that make their way into Firestone Walker beer. Joining from Firestone Walker is Tim Miller, raw materials manager and brewer, and it’s Tim’s job to source the highest quality ingredients, test and analyze them, and make sure that what comes into the brewery is what they expect to come in. Finding great hops wherever they’re grown, whether that’s Nelson, New Zealand, or Germany’s Hallertau, is a big focus for Firestone Walker, and the long-term grower relationships they’ve built over the past 30 years stretch far beyond North America to anywhere and everywhere that great hops are grown.
Episode Four: The Science & the Art (coming May 19)
This series is produced in partnership with Firestone Walker.