Business Week Features Hager Hops
COOPERSTOWN – In this week’s edition, Business Week is featuring Hager Hops, the dirt-to-tap undertaking now being implemented by the Hager family, Anheuser-Busch heirs. Here’s how it starts:
“Strolling among rows of hops on a lush hillside in Cooperstown, N.Y., discussing soil quality and irrigation, Alicia and Louis Hager sound more like the farmers they’ve become than Busch beer royalty. The bines (that’s not a typo; these climbers are not vines) that produce the conelike buds that give beer its flavor and aroma “are very thirsty plants,” Louis says. “They need a constant supply of water.”
“The siblings, who are great-great-grandchildren of Anheuser-Busch founder Adolphus Busch, have started one of the largest of dozens of hop farms cropping up across upstate New York. In May they moved into a cottage on the 1,000-acre property that Busch bought from a hop farmer in the late 1880s. Their goal for the new venture, Hager Hops, is to write a new chapter in the family’s beer saga, which looked to have ended with the sale of Anheuser-Busch to InBev, the world’s largest brewer, in 2008. “This is as exciting as it gets—continuing a family tradition instead of living off past successes,” Louis says. “We’re starting from the ground level—very humble beginnings—and we’re at the farm every day until the sun goes down.”