[Upbeat music begins]
[A slow motion montage including an overhead view of beer pouring into a glass, the inside of a glass filling up with beer, a close up view of beer bubbling in a glass with a layer of foam at the top, and multiple wild hops clustered together.]
Text on screen: Maritimes Wild Hops
[Dr. Jason McCallum sitting in an office and talking to the camera.]
Text on screen: Dr. Jason McCallum – Research Scientist, Phytochemist – Charlottetown Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Dr. Jason McCallum: Hop is really forefront in what you experience when you drink a beer.
[A montage of someone picking up a hand full of wild hops, opening a canned drink, a person holding up a vine of wild hops, beer pouring into a glass, a close up view of a machine stirring a large amount of beer, wild hops dangling in the wind, a crop field of tall wild hops plants placed in rows, and a person cropping a vine of wild hops in a field.]
I’m working on the Wild Hops Research Project, and our goal is to find hops varieties that grow wild here in Atlantic Canada and to develop the best ones into viable crops for the craft brewing industry here.
[Dr. McCallum sitting in an office and talking to the camera.]
We put out a call to the general public, you know, help us find wild hops.
[A montage of Dr. McCallum standing with his arms crossed in front of wild hops, walking down a crop field full of wild hops plants, the top of a wild hops plant swaying in the wind, a person touching a tall wild hops plant that is attached to wire to keep the plants standing up, people placing the plants in a machine and having the wild hops seeds spew into a container.]
And we were inundated with, you know, with tips and hints and people going out of their way to drive an hour to meet us, to take us to their great grandfather’s farm. These hops here in the Maritimes, they’re kind of a product of the environment here. You know, we have a cool, wet growing season, very short growing season, and the plants are very vigorous and hearty.
[A row of multiple beer taps, and a waitress handing over four beers to a group of customers sitting at an outdoor picnic table.]
The whole craft brewing industry and beer enthusiasts in general, it’s really driven by innovation and novelty seeking behaviors.
[A person using a brew bucket to fill up a glass of beer.]
People always want to try the next new flavour and the next new thing.
[Dr. McCallum weighing wild hops seeds on a scale, using a machine to pour boiling liquid into a laboratory porcelain cup, stirring boiling green liquid with a mortar and pestle, and a spinning laboratory flask pointed into a cylinder.]
We haven’t hit full commercialization yet. We’re still in the kind of infancy stages and there’s going to be a period of experimentation going on. So I think a lot of the brewing community is going to start out by they call them Smash Beers, which stands for single malt and single hop.
[A person using a beer tap to pour beer into a glass, and a person swirling a glass of beer in slow motion.]
It’s not a really deep, rich profile of flavors, and it really picks up on one or two key points that, you know, that hop character will really stand out.
[Dr. Jason McCallum sitting in an office and talking to the camera.]
Some of the flavors we’ve encountered, like the Lemony or the Melony type flavors, they might do really well with sour beers or goses.
[A close up view of a person using a beer tap to pour beer into a glass, a glass placed on a table and slowly filling up with beer with wild hops seeds in the background.]
I also think that maybe some of the the sharpness of them could could fit well with lagers and pilsners. You know, it doesn’t have that long, bitter aftertaste, but it’s kind of like…
[A close up view of a beer slowly swaying back and forth in a glass.]
right up front on your palate really fast and then and then kind of crisp and clean afterwards.
[Dr. Jason McCallum sitting in an office and talking to the camera.]
So it’s going to be an exciting time for the brewing industry.
[Dr. Jason McCallum wearing a lab coat and holding up a handful of wild hops seeds to the camera, Dr. McCallum wearing a lab coat and surrounded by laboratory equipment while analyzing a beaker filled with green liquid, and Dr. McCallum swirling the beaker filled with green liquid.]
If we can provide hops that do better in our environment and have unique qualities that brewers and beer connoisseurs will like…
[A group of young adults slowly raising and cheering their glasses of beer.]
they can kind of help our producers carve out a little niche spot for them in the marketplace.
[Upbeat music ends]
[Government of Canada watermark]
[End]
