![\"View](\"http:\/\/www.appellationbeer.com\/images\/20110812-spalt.jpg\")
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This is the view from the first (remember, on this side of the Atlantic the ground is 0 and the first floor one above it) story of a pretty typical hop drying barn in Spalt, Germany’s oldest hop growing region. Hops, trees, enchanting village . . . there’s a lot more to Bavaria, but I favor those ingredients.<\/p>\n
Although Spalt holds Germany’s oldest hops trademark, awarded in 1538, and was once a large hop growing region these days its 75 growers tend to only 370 hectars (a hectar equals about two and a half acres). In contrast, 73 growers oversee production of more than 16,000 hectars in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. <\/p>\n
In the Spalt region, hops is a family business rather than a growth business. <\/p>\n
“It used to be you’d see hops every direction you looked,” Hermann Wissmüller, a local doctor, said between sips of Spalter Leichte Weisse at lunchtime. “One year there would be many new yards, and the next farmers were taking them out.”<\/p>\n
Wissmüller owns part of Stadtbrauerei Spalt in the middle of town. Simply because he’s a resident. It is the only community owned brewery in German, and presumably in the world. “There are 5,000 of us, so I own one five-thousandeth. And so does she,” he said, pointing to the woman who poured me a Spalter Pilsner.<\/p>\n
“No big brewery is going to take over this one,” he said. “It is ours.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the view from the first (remember, on this side of the Atlantic the ground is 0 and the first floor one above it) story of a pretty typical hop drying barn in Spalt, Germany’s oldest hop growing region. Hops, trees, enchanting village . . . there’s a lot more to Bavaria, but I … 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":[36,292],"tags":[477,478,479],"class_list":["post-7306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hops","category-musing","tag-spalt","tag-spalter-pilsner","tag-town-owned-brewery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-1TQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7306","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=7306"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10134,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7306\/revisions\/10134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}