COMSTOCK TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — There’s farmers, and there’s brewers. They rely on each other, but they don’t often overlap.
A farmer grows barley and hops. The brewer turns the ingredients into beer.
However, Bell’s Brewery in Comstock Township, outside Kalamazoo, is growing its own hops for one of its brews.
“Hops are the female flowers of the hop vine,” Larry Bell of Bell’s Brewery told 24 Hour News 8.
For a man known for his beer, Larry Bell is sounding more like a botanist these days, and it’s for good reason. He turned an open field next to Bell’s Brewery into a hops farm.
“Taxonomically they’re in the family cannabises,” he explained. “There’s only one other thing in that family and not legal for most of us in the state of Michigan, at this time.”