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was wondering if he could capture that freshness but give them some shelf life.
• Polley picks the hops buds fresh and grinds them in a meat grinder before freezing them into 2-ounce "hockey pucks" or 4-ounce to 8-ounce bricks.
• But he doesn't have enough hops from his two fields to develop a commercial-scale method, so he'll be sending his son and a friend with a refrigerated truck to a hop farm in Idaho ahead of this month's harvest.
• "We only got an acre," Polley said. "An acre doesn't produce much in the way of hops."
• Michael Zehfus, a Black Hills State University chemistry professor, has been performing tests on Polley's hops. He said early results have been promising.
• "When you fresh freeze it, you keep more of the acids," Zehfus said.
• One difference is that the fresh hops have more water content that the dried ones, so brewers will have to use more by weight in a batch of beer, he said.
• Landon Swanson, owner and brewmaster of Bitter Esters Brewhouse in Custer, said he likes the quality of the locally grown hops and they work nicely with some of the ales he brews.
• But he said the industry in South Dakota is way too new to count on the local hops consistently. He said he'd like to see more South Dakota farmers plant hops and begin to develop a commercial-scale industry in the state.
• "With the short and the demand with craft brewers, it's a no brainer," Swanson said. "Why wouldn't you start growing hops here? We've got great soil."
• He said a big challenge will be adapting the growing methods to a completely different client than popular hops growing regions such as Oregon.
• "Our climate and rainfall and everything else is so much different than say the Yakima Valley and the Wilamette Valley and places where they're having a lot of success with this stuff," he said.
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