German Hop Growing with Mathias Siebler

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Mathias Siebler, a 10th generation German hop farmer, joins me this week from Bavaria to discuss growing hops.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (50:44)

This week I welcome Matthias Siebler. Mathias founded Hops2Brew in 2015 with the goal of linking together hop growers, researchers and the brewing industry. Their web shop is at https://hops2brew.de/en/. He is a 10th generation German hop farmer with degrees in Civil Engineering and a Master’s in Agriculture. He joins us today from Germany.
They asked me to include some fun links to their process and products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HsP2nrv-ug and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OwqwBzMDDM
We discuss the nature of growing hops in Germany and how many of the farms are family owned.
Matthias explains how the German hop market is different than the US and how it is primarily focused on growing noble hops for brewing lagers.
We talk about the varieties grown and also how they are harvested and packaged usually into pellets for use.
Matthias discusses how the hops are tied to the three most popular German beer styles.
He shares his thoughts on the current IPA revolution in craft brewing here in the US and how it has spread to other parts of Europe but not really in Germany.
We talk about how the German hop market is dominated by contracting with a few large distributors and how those contracts drive what farmers grow.
Matthias shares his thoughts on where the market is going and the future of German hops.

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