This August, 11 students joined us at Capracopia Farm in Sebastopol for a truly unique brewing experience. Capracopia Farm has 2 acres of hops bines, in addition to Gravenstein apples, peaches and nectarines, olives, flowers, and lots of goats. It’s a beautiful setting to learn about hops and to brew beer. Farm Manager Scott Bice took us into the hop fields and talked about growing hops organically and biodynamically, and helped us find the perfect hops to pick for our brews. The resident goat kids even tagged along with us into the fields! We brewed 3 different fresh hop beers right on the farm, using Capracopia’s Cascade, Cashmere, and Chinook hops, picked fresh off the bines and sent straight into the kettles. I took a second trip up to the farm about a week after brewing to get even more fresh hops, dry-hopping them in our three brews. The beers came out amazing! The depth of flavor and unique subtle flavors that you get from fresh hops are a real delight. We are so lucky to live in a place where such amazing hops are grown right in our backyard. We’ll definitely do it again in August of 2020, when the hops are ready to harvest, so get on our email list if you’d like to hear about it.