Hopped Up on Hops Farming
Winifred, MT
Written and photographed by Stella Fong
Water is wetting the way for Clay Boyce’s return to his boyhood home in Central Montana to live and work.
“Back in the 1930s or when homesteading was getting going, a lot of people brought hops with them. People used hops basically as a shade tree, and let it grow over their houses.”
- Clay Boyce
On just five acres on the Bear Springs Bench in Fergus County, located between Winfred and Denton, Clay is an anomaly. In a landscape where wheat, barley, and alfalfa are the dominant crops, he is instead growing hops for his company, Triple XXX Hops.
“I started the hops business to be able to come back home, have a business, and be able to help my folks,” Clay said of his growing the flowers of the hop plant, Humulus lupulus, for bittering and flavoring of beer.
After graduating from MSU Northern in Havre with an Agriculture Science degree, Clay hoped to return to Winifred. He was not alone in the desire to settle where he had grown up as his sister, Jesse, and older brother, Casey, also wanted to be with family.
Although Clay’s parents, Dan and Laura, had enough land for all of them to live on, there was not enough water to sustain everyone’s livelihood. Dan and Laura purchased their property on the bench from his parents in the ‘90s, who were living on the Judith River at that point.
“We had hauled water from the river at his parents’ place for 13 years,” Laura recalled. “As the kids got older, it got a little harder keeping up with enough water for all of us.”
Finally, in 2000, they drilled a well which provided just enough water for the cows and the family learned to do with as little water as possible, often sacrificing showers.
“We had the cows up here in the winter and it was just barely enough water,” Laura said. “As the kids got older, they all kept saying they wanted to come home, but we didn’t have a big enough place for everybody to make a living. But how do you pick someone? We just told them they were all welcome as long as they had an extra source of income to help out.”
Casey worked in Denton as a bank loan officer while Jesse commuted to Lewistown to nurse. With more families and homes on the ranch, they drilled for water one more time.
“The water comes from a 3,040-foot artesian well. It does its own thing and its hard water, but good water,” Clay explained.
The Bear Springs Bench, at 3,451 feet elevation and about 400 feet above entrenched sources such as the Judith River and Wolf Creek, affords views of the Big Snowy, Little Snowy, Judith and Moccasin Mountains. Here, Clay erected an 18-foot-high and 260-foot-wide trellis system on five acres to grow four varieties of hops: Centennial, Chinook, Crystal, and Nugget.
Completing an internship at Cricket Yard Hops in Bozeman with Jake Teselle a year prior to planting his own hops helped Clay with his endeavor. Additionally, Sarah Del Moro, an agronomist at the local Co-op in Winifred, offered much advice from her background in hops farming. As an agronomy consultant with a Masters in soil science and experience working at hops operations around the world, Del Moro helped Clay choose the varieties he is now growing by considering the clay-like soil type and harsh weather conditions on the Bench. Since 2018, Clay has been the only commercial grower of hops in North Central Montana.
“Back in the 1930s or when homesteading was getting going, a lot of people brought hops with them,” Clay said. “People used hops basically as a shade tree, and let it grow over their houses.”
The plants produce vines with green leaves in the spring, turning to producing flowers in mid-summer which eventually became the hops resembling soft papery pinecones. Triple XXX Hops harvested this year’s crop in early September.
“Once the cones are developed, they produce lupulin glands, and the cone is prime for harvest when they’re really golden,” Clay continued.
During harvest, family and friends gathered to help. On a lift, one person downs the ropes that have trained one to four vines growing on the trellis. A mechanical harvester strips the hops from the leaves. In a converted grain storage shed, where the dryer, hammer and pelletizer are housed, the hops are placed in a dehydrator to dry at 100 degrees. Once dried, they are run through a hammer mill and made into pellets, resembling rabbit food. The pellets are then frozen and sold to brewers for making beer.
“I started the hops business to be able to come back home, have a business, and be able to help my folks.”
Gally’s Brewing Company in Harlowton, Montana, buys hops from Triple XXX Hops for three of their popular beers, Speed’s Blood Orange Wheat, Montana Hef, and Happy Gail.
“That's been my go-to bittering hop this summer,” Matt Speed, owner and brew master, said of the popular hops with herbaceous, floral, fruity, and spicy notes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper.
For now, water is supplying the essence of life for Clay and his siblings to be able to return home and be a family.