Wednesday, September 21, 2011

4 September 2011 - I Feel Hoppy









Visit To The Hops Plant

We biked to Mutějovice today and had a quick stop at the local hops plant. I got to see the whole process from putting the tall vines onto a conveyer to be separated into the hops flower and the discarded vine. I totally loved the smell; it was like floral beer everywhere you went.


The hops were put into bags and transferred into a huge building to dry them. They were moved up to the top of the plant and put into a large room at 60 degrees C to dry them for a certain time. From there, they were moved lower and lower down until they were filled on the bottom level into large yellow bags weighing about 50kg a piece. These bags were numbered and checked for moisture levels before being stored.


It was an amazing process to see. The hops season is a short one in Czech Republic and comes towards the end of the summer. Since the whole country drinks beer as though it were water, they need a lot of hops in order to keep the population fully saturated.

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