![\"Michigan](\"http:\/\/www.appellationbeer.com\/images\/20080513-michhops.jpg\")
Those are Michigan hops on the right.<\/p>\nThose are Michigan hops on the right.<\/p>\n
How can I tell? It’s a trick. I shot the picture in 1995 when we were on our way to visit Kalamazoo Brewing, as it was known then, and talk with founder Larry Bell for a story Daria was writing for Brew<\/em> magazine. We stopped at a roadside farm stand, chatted with the woman selling produce from her farm and she mentioned she was also grew hops for Bell.<\/p>\n Not enough for even a decent size batch of beer, but that wasn’t the point. A few years later Bell bought some six-row barley — you know, the stuff America’s largest breweries use — grown on Michigan’s “Thumb” to brew a batch of Homegrown Ale.<\/p>\n So a recent transaction seems perfectly consistent. “I’m becoming a farmer,”<\/a> he told the Kalamazoo Gazette<\/em> after signing a $400,000 sales agreement with a farmer near Mount Pleasant who will grow two-row barley for Bell’s Brewery, as its known these days.<\/p>\n A subsidiary of Bell’s Brewery Inc., called Bell’s Brewery Farms LLC, purchased an 80-acre farm in Shephard. Bell said that land is being prepared to grow soy beans as part of a regular crop rotation. That land should produce barley by next year. Turnwald has already used 40 acres of another nearby property to grow barley for Bell’s.<\/p>\n That barley will most likely be used for a new specialty brew, Bell said.<\/p>\n “Our preliminary plan right now … is to introduce a new brand in November and it’s not for sure at this time, but it would be a Christmas ale made with Michigan barley and, partial, Michigan-grown hops,” said Bell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Isn’t it winemakers who are supposed to be farmers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Those are Michigan hops on the right. How can I tell? It’s a trick. I shot the picture in 1995 when we were on our way to visit Kalamazoo Brewing, as it was known then, and talk with founder Larry Bell for a story Daria was writing for Brew magazine. We stopped at a roadside … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beers-of-conviction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-93","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}