VIDEO: Farm to keg
Students in MSU Denver's Beer Industry Program harvest locally grown hops for a new Tivoli Brewing Co. IPA.
For Leanne Lomax, a brewery-operations student at Metropolitan State University of Denver, there’s more to like about beer than just drinking it.
“There’s a big story about the process, the art and the science mixed together,” she says. “And I wanted to be a part of telling that story.”
That story starts at Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms, which offered up a fresh batch of Mexicana hops for a new Tivoli Botanic Fresh Hop Amber IPA.
Students joined Tivoli Brewing Co. staffers at the farm to harvest the hops, which they took directly to Tivoli’s satellite brewery at Denver International Airport.
“When we talk about the beer-industry program, there’s a lot of talk about what goes into a beer,” says Ethan Tsai, Ph.D., an instructor in MSU Denver’s Beer Industry Program. “But it’s another thing to bring people out to (Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms) and have them hands-on pick the actual hops, to feel the resin on their hands, to smell it when it’s fresh, to tell how that aroma changes over time. … It’s a very tactile experience.”
