We grow hops. Two kinds even.
What exactly are hops?… you might well wonder.
According to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, hops are one of the only three ingredients for making beer (the other two being barley and water. Yeast had yet to be discovered.)
Hops are a truly amazing plant. They are hardy perennials that come up from a rizome, grow like mad all summer, blossom, grow, and die down in the winter. In spring, hops do the same things all over again. Jim says he’d have no trouble believing the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, if it were actually Jack and the Hops. They make a sturdy vine that grows 20-30 feet up the guide wire to the telephone pole that is in our back yard. 
We’ve harvested our own hops. We don’t use them for brewing. The way I understand it, the packaged hops that Jim buys and adds to the beer he homebrews are calibrated so he knows exactly how much bitterness he’s adding to his beer (right, honey?) Using the hops from the garden would be a gamble, final product wise.
I know, however, that one day, when Jim gets one of these
and the perfect huge copper brew pot
and dresses up like this, 
he’ll need those homegrown hops for the authentic (and unpredictable) colonial beer taste.
Very interesting article! I found your site while looking for info on growing hops, and I see that you have interesting articles about all sorts of gardening topics. You do a great job!