Virginia State University Associate Professor Laban K. Rutto tends cones at the VSU hop yard. (Photo by William H. Porter)
Over the railway bridge, about 3 miles from Virginia State University’s campus, sit 416 acres that could change Virginia’s agriculture with each harvest or research trial. Native grass sways lush in a season when most varieties lie dormant. Catfish, bass and striped shrimp weave through blue-green ponds. And on a 1.4-acre lot, Associate Professor Laban K. Rutto is trying to bring back what was one of the state’s biggest crops: hops, those flowering flavoring agents that help craft your beer.
“Virginia used to be called the hops capital of the New World,” says Rutto, a horticulturalist. “We are no longer No. 1 in anything now, but we used to be. Hops were in Virginia, then moved to Massachusetts, then to New York, then they moved west. Now it’s 90 percent in Washington state, and it’s a function of climate.”
Virginia’s heat, months of punishing humidity and obstinate drainage influenced the migration, and still pave the way for powdery and downy mildew. It’s one of the reasons Rutto is here today, standing alongside 40 varietals of hops, some of which had never before been planted in the Old Dominion. He’s here to find the strains that grow best in our state, their vines sprouting this month or next and climbing 18-foot strands of baling twine through early fall, when they’ll develop arms and flower cones. At that point down come the vines, snapped off the trellises of Rutto’s own making, the cones separated and tested rigorously in a lab.
Just as Rutto’s services at the university are three-pronged — educate students, train Virginia farmers and conduct research — so are his hops projects. In addition to testing the viability of specific breeds, he’s also running experiments on nitrogen levels in the soil, as well as the crops’ resistance to mildew and other diseases.
But what you’re all here for is the Virginia-based beer.
“What we are trying to do is get all the craft breweries to each have a beer on tap that is made from 100 percent local ingredients,” Rutto says. “That will be enough.” To do this, he’s teamed up with Ashland’s Center of the Universe Brewing Co., as well as Carytown’s Garden Grove Brewing Co. — and the latter’s co-owner and head brewer just happens to be Michael Brandt, a former VSU co-worker of Rutto. With a background in wine, one of Brandt’s chief curiosities about the hops is terroir, or the flavor Virginia’s climate and soil will impart to the hops cones. “I want to know how right outside of Petersburg and Madison County compare, how they compare when they’re grown in clay soil compared to sandy loam," he says. “Virginia is pretty diverse; the northwest is different from the southeast in soil, temperature, growing season, when the frost happens.” All of these aspects could — and most likely will — gift a unique flavor to each varietal.
Amid lab research, tasting panels and brewery trials this fall, Rutto, COTU and Garden Grove will analyze bittering properties, flavor, aroma, and alpha and beta acids, among other criteria. Eventually, you’ll be able to try a beer or two made from these very harvests. Last September, Brandt brewed his orange-scented Capital Stout using some of Rutto’s first yield of Cascade hops. It was gone within a month. This year, with larger projected harvests from Rutto, Brandt’s hoping for even greater success and embracing the unknown.
“I mean, who knows?" he says. "Some variety here might have one of the most sought-after unique hop flavors in the world, and all of a sudden, acres all over the state are full of that one variety. It’s totally possible. Can’t wait to find out.”
