Our Story
It all began with an idea, between brother-in-laws, over a beer. What if we grow our own hops and help breweries in our area to create a locally sourced and crafted beer?
In 2017, Evan & Brandi (husband & wife), Kelby (Brandi’s brother), and Steve (Brandi’s dad) installed a small hop trellis system with 300 plants. We realized quickly that there are many struggles in Southwest Kansas, such as high temperatures and high winds that make growing hops very challenging. We started with a test plot row to see which varieties of hops grow the best under these conditions. These varieties have now been incorporated into our yard permanently and we have expanded to an acre so that we may adequately meet the needs of the breweries we provide our hops to.
After a couple of years of our hops doing so well we wanted to create an “on the farm” tasting room for the craft beers that were made with our hops. Unfortunately for us, that was around the time COVID-19 hit the United States and our dream of our tasting room seemed to be just that… a dream. As time during the pandemic passed, Brandi came up with the idea to convert their rarely used camper into a mobile bar. After a lot of renovating, Steve and Evan made Brandi’s dream into a reality.
In May of 2021, we officially launched The Tipsy Farmer camper bar. We have since served at many private and local events and loved every minute of it.
In addition to providing hops for beer, we have also sourced our hops to make soaps and loose leaf teas. These are made available to our customers that might not enjoy beer.
We would just like to say thank you for supporting us and our dream.
GROWING BEER
A FAMILY OWNED & OPERATED HOP YARD IN SOUTHWEST KANSAS, GROWING QUALITY HOPS FOR MORE THAN JUST BEER.
Our Varieties
Currently, we grow three varieties. These varieties are ones that have grown best for us here in SW Kansas:
Cascade
Chinook
Comet
Crop Updates
In 2018, we expanded the yard to a full acre. Dodge City Brewing was the first Brewery in SW Kansas to brew beer with fresh, local, whole leaf SW Kansas hops.
In 2019, we removed a few varieties that weren’t performing well. We added Flat Mountain Brewhouse to our customer list. We taught ourselves how to pelletize our own hops!
In 2020, Mother Nature unleashed a hailstorm that made our Hop Yard look like a COVID unit. We were still able to salvage a few hops and added Hidden Trail Brewing to our Breweries List.
Since then, we’ve sent hops to breweries in Oklahoma & Texas and to numerous home brewers across the U.S.
Now that you can get out and about and enjoy social life once again, Go Support Your Local Brewery!
More Than Just Beer
Not a beer drinker? Here are some other ways to enjoy our hops:
Teas: HopLeaf Tea, LLC has made some teas with our hops inside. Get the benefits of black tea, along with the benefits of hops.
Soaps: Mel, over at Calloused Hands Bounty, has handmade some beautiful hop soaps for us. They smell wonderful and are very moisturizing.
In 2018, we received a grant from the NRCS and erected a high-tunnel. The 80 mph winds we had on December 15, 2021 confirmed that high tunnels just weren’t designed to live on the open prairie in Southwest Kansas and ripped our tunnel to shreds.
We decided to try to beat Mother Nature and in the Spring of 2022, we put up a new greenhouse, only we put it 5 feet in the ground, so that only the roof is exposed to the harsh winds. Hopefully, this one won’t blow away.
We hosted an Open House, Mother’s Day event, a birthday party, paint parties and even a Cocktail Making Class in the new Greenhouse in 2022.
We have lots of plans for more events in 2023, so subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with all the happenings at the Hop Yard and with The Tipsy Farmer Mobile Bar.
Cheers!