Retiree turns commercial organic hops farmer

PARIS – Retired mechanic Rick Courcy, who may be Maine’s only commercial hops grower, drew his inspiration from a beer commercial on television.

Courcy is not a beer drinker. The closest he came to gardening was the potted tomatoes he tended on his deck. Until recently, he had never seen a hops plant.

But his whim marks the return to Maine of a crop that once was common in the East.

“Hops used to grow in almost every farmer’s backyard,” said John Harker of the Maine Department of Agriculture.

But a downy mildew blight along the East Coast pushed hops production west, and most of the U.S. crop now is grown in the dry valleys of the Pacific Northwest.

“To my knowledge, there is no one else growing commercially” in the state, Harker said.

Courcy, who moved his family from Massachusetts after tiring of city life, bought 90 acres with a view of Streaked Mountain and Mount Washington.

He spent the winter trying to figure out what he could grow on his land that no one else was growing.

His decision came after a Budweiser commercial appeared on television. “And I looked at the TV and I said, ‘I think I just figured out what I’m going to grow,”‘ he recalled.

One of the main ingredients of beer, hops adds bitterness to the sweetness of fermented barley. Some brewers add a second handful of hops late in the brewing process to add aroma to the beer.

Hops take their flavor from the minerals in the ground, Courcy said, and larger farms in the West even spray minerals onto their soil to ensure a healthy, flavorful plant.

“I constantly have minerals,” he said. “It’s the highest mineral content in Maine.”

Courcy’s next step was to buy 550 hops rhizomes, or root stalks, of six different varieties, from a supplier in England. With help from his 18-year-old son, Rik, Courcy cut about 25 poles from a stand of pine trees behind his house and erected three 100-foot-long trellises.

Despite attacks by Japanese beetles and deer, Courcy was determined to avoid chemicals and grow organic hops. A homemade brew of onions, garlic and jalapeno peppers – along with cotton balls soaked in coyote urine stuck on the trellis posts – solved the pest problem.

After two months, some of the plants have reached a height of 10 feet. “They say 6 feet is a good height for a first year,” Courcy said. “I think we’re going to do all right here.”

As word gets out about Courcy’s venture, Maine brewers are starting to express interest.

“We were excited about having Maine-grown hops,” said Barbara Patton, co-owner of Atlantic Brewing Co. in Bar Harbor.

Her husband Doug Maffucci said he would be interested in creating a special edition beer with Courcy’s hops once the farm has had a successful harvest.

Courcy may expand into beer making. He has been invited to visit local breweries and said he eventually would like to create a brew of his own: the Paris View Brew.