Michael Pool

photo / suzanneandsimon Referred to as hop vine, hops is actually a bine 

Ten years ago some farmers couldn’t give hops away to beer brewers. Several years of overproduction had left the hops market saturated with supply and short on buyers. Today that couldn’t be further from the truth. Over the next few years beer enthusiasts around the world may be feeling the pinch on both their palates and their pocketbooks.

I was a terrible salesman from the start. Maybe the other guys were greedy, or maybe they were just hungry — a set of kids and a deep mortgage could do either to a man, but I just didn’t have it in me.