My hands are blistered, my back aches, and there’s enough dirt beneath my nails to plant a bonsai garden. There is, I’m told, something rewarding about this farm life, but I don’t know what it is yet. While the tomatoes we eat here are better than any found in a store, and my room and board is well worth the twenty-five work hours required of me a week, I find little glory in the sowing of spinach, in the harvesting of chard.
There is, however, an intrinsic thrill in all things boozy, and as of this week’s hop harvest, my thirst for farming has been whetted. Humulus lupulus is a member of the Cannabis family (Cannabaceae) and much like with marijuana, only its female plants are useful—the best of which are bred clonally. The last morning of August, we took down the vertical trellises on which we grew three varieties of hops—noir, blanc, and jaune. The rest of that day and the two since, we’ve been stripping the hop flowers from their vines, setting them aside to be oven-dried and then brewed into beer along with water, yeast, and starch (typically, and in this case, malted barley—though others may be used). Hops are what give a good beer its complex aroma, and the alpha-acids in their flowers provide a tangy bitterness to balance out the sweetness of the malted grain.
Unfortunately, I will no longer be in Switzerland by the time this beer is ready. I have my heart set on another harvest and another sort of alcohol, and tomorrow I depart for Burgundy.
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