On September 6th my husband Nicholas and I awoke at 5am, in
order to drive 3 hours through bi-polar weather into Mabton, Washington. I know
what you’re thinking, “Mabton, Washington? That can only mean one thing!” Hops baby! Yes my husband managed to wrangle a
tour of Hops Direct, Puterbaugh Farm.
We arrived at what appeared to be an office,
within was a sweetie faced boxer mix and two nice ladies who told us the
actual factory was down the road a piece. They sent us on our way with directions
and gift bags! Woot.Upon exiting our car at the factories location, my nose was immediately
suckered punched with the powerful scent of fresh hops being harvested. I said “Woah!”
As Nicholas breathed deeply with appreciation. I had been dozing in and out of sleepy
town the whole trip, I just woke up big time.Another nice lady appeared and ushered our stumbley, just
been punched in the face by a hop ghost after being in a car too long, legs towards
the factory (ok that was just me). The
first walk through I was too shy to ask if I could take pictures. Once I
worked up the gumption to ask, she told me it was alright and then took us though the
factory again so I could get pictures! It’s a new camera, and I haven’t had
time to learn all the functions. So here are the pictures I snapped while taking
the tour a second time.
The guys here are hooking the hop bines, still on the twine
onto hooks that hoist them up and into the machine. The machine is a simple piece of …um machinery. The purpose
appears to be, beating the hell out of the bines in order to whack the cones
off. The rest of the machine separates out the leaves, twigs and the twine.
It
moved pretty fast and seemed to work quite efficiently. I can’t imagine how
much more labor intensive it was back in the day before this kind of device had
been thought up.
The hops have too much moisture at this point, so they get
to hang out in a giant kiln to dry out.
Once they are sufficiently dry, the
fabric they are on gets pulled down to the floor below where it is much cooler and
the hops can, you guessed it, cool down.
Then the hops get compressed into
giant bales and continue to dry out in storage before they are sold.
All the twigs and leaves get mulched and go back into the
soil. I thought that was pretty neat, the whole process seemed to go really fast
and appeared to be very low impact on the environment.
This mulch pile will be the size of Mt. Rainier before
harvest season is over.
They said we could take home some hops, I had big pockets so guess what I got to do?
Before we left, our tour guide told us there was a hop
museum not far off in Toppenish. With pockets full we set off in search of the
mysterious museum. We arrived just in time for it to open.
The museum employee recommended
the educational video. I felt like I was back in school. The video was about
10 minutes long and made about 30 years ago. We then went through the museum,
it was kind of neat. Mostly pictures on walls and collections of old hop harvesting
equipment.
Hmm, what a conspicuous fancy display...I wonder who could have paid for it?
We were the only people in the museum and had the unhappy suspicion that
we might be the only people to have been there all day, or all week. Empty
museums bum me out, and since beer has been such a big part of civilizations. I
thought the co-evolution of the farming industry coupled with the spread commerce.
Would have made for better attendance, even though it was kind of boring…anyway!
I was in a good humor and it was fun. Yet Topppenish is a weird area, we were kind of relieved to
get out. But not before eating at the most glamorous restaurant Yakima county
had to offer. Taco bell.
Very interesting
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