Plenty of regions come to mind when talking about hop-growing regions: the Pacific Northwest, Hallertau, Lubin, etc. But what about regions that have come and gone, the former hop-growing regions?
Jennifer Jordan is in the process of researching her new book and joins the show to share some of the stories she has uncovered. She is a professor of Sociology at The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She is the author of Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2006).
Her current manuscript is titled Before Craft Beer: Lost Landscape of Forgotten Hops, which explores the boom and bust of hop growing in Wisconsin during the 1800s. She shares stories of the women who harvested the hops, what was involved in the hop bust, and other accounts from old diaries.