Walk-in Freezer and Pelletizing

[NorthForkHops]

I manage a small hop farm on the east end of Long Island. We are continuing to expand as the years progress, and recently we have started to acquire a new fifty acre parcel of land. The majority of breweries on Long Island heavily prefer pellets to whole leaf hops.

I know that a bale of whole leaf take up about sixteen square feet. I am not sure what the volume of the pellets runs overall. Does anyone know about how much space pellets take up per pound or hundred pound?

I am also curious if anyone has any experience with milling and pelletizing inside of a freezer? And if that has any effect on controlling processing temperature?

The freezer I am considering is 9'8"x10'8"x8'6". It should cover my storage needs for some years to come. I am wondering as to how far I can push it if we start breaking into the fifty acre piece and into heavy expansion.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Let me answer as many as I can, starting from the end of your post.

How long will a 900 sq ft freezer last you? For storing pellets, quite awhile assuming you have a fair amount of your crop pre-allocated and can ship it out immediately. I don't remember off the top of my head but the volume reduction from whole leaf to pellet is something like 1:22, maybe a bit more.

Put it another way, a refrigerated semi trailer full of baled hops that has been pelletized and packaged would easily fit in your walk-in freezer. Its sounds like a lot but that's only a couple of tons.

Something else to think about is storage of the whole leaf/baled hops prior to pelletizing. Whether you use ring die (best) or flat die (PIA), you end up with some waste due to charging the die. So the efficient thing to do is to harvest everything first and hold off pelletizing until all of a given variety is in the door. This means you have to have a lot of refrigerated storage on hand. We ran with refrigerated trailers we rented last year but the price of diesel makes building a 40,000 sq ft cooler a much better option.

If you search my previous posts, you'll see some ranting about pelletizing. Flat die pellet mills are much cheaper ($5k or less) but it will take forever to pelletize everything and they can get jammed. The hops get down into the die an gum it up forcing you to rip it apart and clean often. Plus its harder to get the cooling into the die.

Ring die is much better. Even on the smallest, you can run hundreds of lb/hr and keep them cool. Clean up is easier and it won't gum up. Of course you are looking at $40k for the pelletizer alone.

There are a number of people that do pelletize in a freezer. It helps keep thing moving along because without the humidity in the air, the hops aren't as sticky. It can provide cooling but the results are not always satisfactory. We've been sent pellets from set-ups like those and they often show signs of temperature abuse, but not always. The key is to slow the process down to keep heat down because you need the die itself to stay cool. Even if the mill powder is near freezing as it enters the die and is immediately cooled upon leaving the die, it will heat up very quickly inside the die and turn into little green/brown crayons.

We use liquid nitrogen to cool our die. Likewise, the nitrogen blankets the entire process so from the moment the lupulin glands are burst in the hammermill, they are protected from oxygen.

 

[brian4508]

You will also be required to have an AG-20C license in NYS. There are specific requirements that must be met to receive that licensing. Just a heads up for doing your research.


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[GVH_Dan]

Yeah, don't forget you will be a food processing facility. I don't know all the regulations in NY but here in WI we need an official USDA inspection every year before we start up along with several different licenses. If you don't have them all in place, you get shut down. Happened to a guy in MI.

 

[NorthForkHops]

You will also be required to have an AG-20C license in NYS. There are specific requirements that must be met to receive that licensing. Just a heads up for doing your research.


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I am aware of the licensing. NY is very strict and very annoying.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Yes, meeting all the regulations/licensing requirements is strenuous but it is in your best interest and the best interest of your customers.

Let's say you have 2 processing shops. One licensed and one not licensed. The first has gone through all the steps to assure they meet the governments standards for a FOOD processing facility. So there is a base level of comfort that this level of oversight/quality control will extend through the whole process including back to the field. The latter is pelletizing using a unit that last week was doing alfalfa pellets for rabbits and wood pellets before that. They have taken a number of short cuts and that attitude probably extends through the whole process.

Now imagine you are a brewer, who would you want to buy pellets from? Someone like the first that has an inspection certificate from the state, pesticide/herbicide/water logs recorded for recall purposes, documented operating procedures, inspection process for metal and other foreign materials...or some guy that is just trying to git-r-done and make a couple of bucks while being in the "beer" industry.

To put it yet another way, "Hops are Food". That's the new slogan coming out of the Hops Research Council and the American Society of Brewing Chemists. They are serious about this statement and about regulating/testing the quality of hops going in their beer. In the past, all hops were boiled and then removed so certain sins could be overlooked. Now, there is so much dry hopping and late additions that contaminants contained in the hops can easily spoil a brew.

Sorry, I'll jump off my soap box now. This has been a hot button issue for me because my entire career has been centered around safety in the food industry where it is taken very seriously. Then I enter the small scale hop growing industry and everyone seems to either ignore it or laugh it off.

If you want to know what it takes to do it "right", read this document: Best Practices Guide for Hop Processing . We put it together under a grant from the USDA and state of WI to lay out the minimum process that should be followed. Is this "extra" work worth it? Well, we moved our entire harvest (several tons of hops) in about 2 weeks last year while many of our counterparts that are using unlicensed processing facilities in other state are still sitting on their product.

 

[NorthForkHops]

Thanks for all the advice. I have read the best practices guide a few times now. And we keep records according to NOFA standards for all fertilizer, pesticides and processing. If my years in agriculture have taught me anything it's: keep good records and respect the DEC.

 

[brian4508]

You may want to contact Larry and Kate at Foothills Hops in Munnsville NY. They have a similar setup.


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[Oxbow]

NorthForkHops, what did you end up selecting for a pelletizer setup?