Osborn Brewing is a homebrew shop that just recently opened on American Way at Highway 63 in Monroe. Besides selling supplies like boiling pots, thermometers, siphons and fermentors, owner Brent Osborn wants to make locally grown hops available to local beer makers.
Osborn says one out of 160 to 170 people over the course of a year will try to make beer at home. As brewers know, having fresh ingredients is one of the most important factors in making beer. Unfortunately, right now there aren’t a lot of hop options for local brewers.
Until now.
Osborn is in the process of turning 86 acres of land into a hop farm. This will provide locally sourced hops to area brewers from the hobby to professional scale. This also means that when it comes time to harvest, brewers will have a source of fresh “wet hops” to use in their seasonal brews.
Great breweries are popping up in Dayton and Cincinnati. Osborn thinks that in order for these breweries to stick around and crank out delicious beer for a long time having a local options for their hop needs will make a difference . It can be costly to ship large orders of hops. By having a local option, the hops only need to travel 30 minutes or less.
Of course it will take a lot of work and money to turn 86 acres of land into a hop farm, so Osborn has just launched a Kickstarter campaign. “f we secure funding by the end of the year, we can have crops as early as 2014,” Osborn shares. With a goal to raise $10,000, by May 1st, incentives are listed for investors from $5 to $5,000. How much is fresh hops worth to you?
