PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: We begin our show today with beer. There's been an explosion in the number of so-called craft beers available around the country. That in turn is driving a multimillion-dollar expansion of Australia's hop fields and the development of new varieties. Fiona Breen reports from Tasmania.

FIONA BREEN, REPORTER: Making a brew is as much an art as a science for this farmer-turned-craft beer-maker. A careful combination of hot malted barley and wheat gets the process going.

WILL TATCHELL, VAN DIEMAN BREWING: All the carbohydrates within the grain itself will be converted into simple sugars which are then available for us on the yeast further down the brewing process.

FIONA BREEN: Will Tatchell's putting together a signature annual brew. The special ingredients are the heritage hops grown in the family's own small plot.

WILL TATCHELL: This is what we're after, Fiona, these nice, plump, very aromatic hop flowers.

FIONA BREEN: And what variety are these?

WILL TATCHELL: These are a Super Pride variety, so their alpha acid is around about the 13 per cent mark and they're pretty good growing in Tasmania.

FIONA BREEN: The alpha acid is a compound in the hop that gives beer its bitterness. Today the hot brew is poured over the freshly-picked cones to give the mix its distinctive, slightly traditional hoppy aroma.

WILL TATCHELL: It's probably the best brew day of the year to actually do it. It's incredibly enjoyable and, yeah, because we only get one chance at it, we try and do the best possible job we can.

FIONA BREEN: For Will Tatchell, mixing up his own unique flavours is a lot of fun and he's getting a reputation and a following for his boutique beers. It's a hobby that's turned into a passion and now a career. So much so, he's taken up brewing full-time and left Dad to tend to this truly mixed family farm.

WILL TATCHELL: When I was going through university, the drought was relatively prevalent in the early 2000s, so it was - I looked to diversify my skill set and brewing was something that took my interest and it's obviously continued as a passion now. So when I came back from overseas, having worked as a brewer in the UK, it was something that we were pretty keen on pursuing, and the farm - the family farm was somewhere that, one, we had the location to do it, the space to do it and, yeah, we did genuinely see it as a diversification of the rural operations that we had on the farm at that time.

FIONA BREEN: His beers are sought after in Tasmania and they're catching on in New South Wales. Business is good and production is growing.

WILL TATCHELL: We've gone from the first 12 months of operation, we produced a tad under 30,000 litres. This financial year, we're looking at producing around about 105,000 litres. So, a significant increase and we project that to hopefully continue with the rise of craft beer and the craft beer industry.

FIONA BREEN: And it is growing. More and more people are opting to drink boutique or craft beer.

It's a strange phenomenon at a time when beer consumption overall is down, way down and still dropping. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal a drop in beer consumption of 40 per cent over 50 years.

OWEN JOHNSTON, HOP PRODUCTS AUSTRALIA: Our tonnage hit a low point in 2014 at 400 tonnes and since then we've been progressively replanting and changing our variety mix, reinvigorating our paddocks, increasing our yields with modern varieties. And this year, we hope to go over 1,000 tonnes and in the coming years we have a stretch target of something over 1,500 tonnes.

FIONA BREEN: This reinvigorating and replanting is part of Australia's biggest hop farm strategy to keep operating in what has actually been a gloomy market for some time. The big beer companies have been brewing less beer and buying less hops.

And while Hop Products Australia is part of the largest hop growing and trading group in the world, it's just a blip on the world production scene. That's perhaps why it's been able to change quickly to cater to the growing number of smaller breweries.

OLIVER WARD, HPA FARM MANAGER: It's been a volatile industry in the past, but it's certainly got some stability under it at the moment, and with that stability, we're fortunate enough to have owners that are willing to back us and invest in that expansion. So, yeah, it's a great time to be a hop farmer.

FIONA BREEN: Microbreweries mixing up their own unique blends are popping up everywhere. For this company, they've become important customers and today a group of brewers is getting a tour as the 2016 hops are harvested.

They're making beer for a new type of beer drinker who pick their amber ales like they pick their wine: looking for flavour and aroma. Hop Growers Australia is offering them a range of hops.

OWEN JOHNSTON: I like to refer to them as sort of macro consumer trends. They're the same trends that drive coffee and cheese and wine. It's about regionality and knowing the hands and faces of the producers behind the product. People are much more conscious now of what they put in their bodies and the way the hop farm and the hops that we grow for this sector of the market really deepens the story behind their beers.

FIONA BREEN: The company is actually increasing its hectares of land under hops by 30 per cent in Victoria and by 20 per cent in Tasmania. In the Derwent Valley, history is repeating itself. New trellis and new plantings have gone into areas that haven't grown hops for decades.

OLIVER WARD: We're harvesting 230 hectares this year and that's about the area that we've had in production in the past, although it's increased in terms of the main varieties, the proprietary varieties that we're producing. But we've also constructed an extra 40 hectares of trellis and planted that in the last 12 months on this farm, and on our farm in Victoria we've constructed another 50 hectares and planted that out as well.

FIONA BREEN: Hops have been grown here in Bushy Park for more than 150 years. Originally, just a couple of different hops were grown, but with the explosion in the craft beer market here and overseas, this company has invested heavily in research into new varieties.

OWEN JOHNSTON: Over the last five or six years, we've transitioned this business away from 90 per cent alpha to, you know, hops for bittering to - and 10 per cent for aroma to 90 per cent flavour and aroma, 10 per cent bittering. We're almost - we've ceased growing Pride of Ringwood, a hop that's been on this farm since the mid-'60s.

FIONA BREEN: That was a big move, but they've been able to follow the market trend away from the bitter hops favoured by generations past to the craft hops of the future where flavour rather than bitterness is key. And that's why the work in the nursery has increased dramatically. There's a constant search for new hop varieties and the team in the nursery is always trying new cultivars which offer a unique flavour, aroma and a higher yield.

SIMON WHITTOCK, HPA HOP BREEDER: We look to generate up to 20 or 30 new crosses every year, to plant up to 2,000 new seedlings every year, to end up with one new variety every 20 years or something like that. So we start that cycle every year. The cycle takes about 12 years. So this breeding garden here encapsulates that whole cycle. So, yeah, picking the right male and the right pollen to put onto the right female is a really critical part of the process.

FIONA BREEN: In the nursery, there's constant change. The hop breeding program is not dissimilar to breeding animals. It's all about the parents.

SIMON WHITTOCK: The actual selection of the parents that you choose is very scientific. There's a lot of genetics goes into it, both in terms of looking at DNA and in terms of understanding how traits are passed on from parent to offspring. Yeah, and that, hopefully, after a period of time, gets us towards the goals that we're breeding for.

FIONA BREEN: Any new varieties they develop have a type of patent on them, giving the company exclusive rights to grow those particular hops.

This farm is hoping some of those new varieties will catch on in the marketplace. They've already hit the jackpot with Galaxy. It's caught on in the market and is being sold across Australia and overseas.

OLIVER WARD: When I first started here back eight years ago, we were producing four varieties that were all open market varieties, so the likes of Super Pride and Victoria and Millennium, and we were producing them for alpha contracts. And there was a bit of a spike in the alpha demand in 2009 and then we could see that that demand wasn't sustainable and so we started investing back into our breeding program and proprietary varieties and developing them and expanding them. So we've been busy pulling out old varieties and putting in the new ones that we've got exclusive access to and rights over in the market.

FIONA BREEN: A win in the market is a win for scientist Simon Whittock. He's driving research. These are his babies and the painstaking search for the next new hop starts straight after harvest.

SIMON WHITTOCK: We do 180,000 cuttings a year to feed the planting program that we have, which in turn feeds the demands from the market that we're seeing at the moment.

FIONA BREEN: Every few years, one variety is given the green light and handed over to Oliver Ward for planting in the main fields.

At Bushy Park, the company is now growing 12 different commercial varieties of hops. At its property in Victoria, there are six. As a whole, they're a sensitive plant to grow.

OLIVER WARD: They're quite fickle. Sometimes we refer to them as "little princesses" because when things aren't going exactly how they like them to be, weatherwise and what have you, then - or nutrition or water isn't - water relations aren't where they should be, then they sort of turn up their toes and let you know that things aren't right. But when conditions are just right, then they're really happy and a very rewarding crop to grow because they grow incredibly fast when the conditions are right, up to six inches overnight. And then they put on a terrific display of flowers which we're picking at the moment, the hop cones, and they have lovely aromas that go into terrific beers. So, yeah, they're an interesting crop.

FIONA BREEN: With so many new varieties in the hop fields, harvest time is a logistical nightmare. In an ideal world, they're able to stagger the harvesting as different varieties ripen, but more often than not, varieties are ready at the same time. Within six weeks though, it's all over.

OLIVER WARD: It certainly adds a level of complexity to the business when you've got 10 different varieties with different training dates, days on string, harvest dates and production volumes, and also agronomically, the different varieties require different treatment in the field. So, there is an added element of complexity, for sure.

FIONA BREEN: Harvesting techniques haven't changed much over the years, even with the different varieties. The hop bines, with a B, are cut from the bottom first before a second cutter comes through to snip the line from the top. Tractors take the plants to the processing shed where the cones are stripped off the bine.

OLIVER WARD: We've got 70 hectares of Galaxy to harvest this year and then next year we'll be up to around 110, so, that's our main variety at the moment. But then we have some minor varieties such as Willamette and Helga, which are only sort of, you know, four or five hectares each and then everything in between.

FIONA BREEN: The cone-shaped flowers are moist and need to be laid out in a big kiln area to dry. It's these flowers and the lupulin glands inside with their resins and essential oils that gives beer its flavour and aroma.

OWEN JOHNSTON: You can see those little yellow sacs there. They're the lupulin glands. That's where the aroma comes from. So they accumulate some of the secondary metabolites. As the hop grows and its life cycle changes, they start to accumulate some of these metabolites in there and they happen to taste wonderful in beer.

FIONA BREEN: And they do taste great in beer. Former beer industry worker and now craft beer blogger Chris Lukianenko is a fan of brewers mixing it up.

CHRIS LUKIANENKO, BEER BLOGGER: Mmm! That's a very tasty beer from a fairly new brewer in New South Wales. This is a hybrid American and English pale ale that's really hopped up with some nice hops to give it a really nice balanced bitterness on their malt backbone, but also some beautiful aromas of fruitiness coming through.

FIONA BREEN: These are really - you could almost call them poncy beers, don't you think?

CHRIS LUKIANENKO: Yeah, you could, yeah. I think something a bit like wine. You know, in wine people talk about the flavours and the esters that they taste and smell in wine. It's all happening in the beer now as well because there's similar sorts of things coming from these natural ingredients that produce all sorts of wonderful and weird flavours and aromas. It's fantastic.

FIONA BREEN: And there's a lot of brewers in Australia experimenting with their own beers - 400 at the last count. Even the big players are in the boutique beer market, although that is a bone of contention for the purists.

CHRIS LUKIANENKO: The definition of craft beer is kind of grey. You've got some of the bigger players in the market that are producing flavoursome beer out of large brews and calling it craft and then you've got the other end of the scale where you've got the smaller producers who are, you know, one-man bands that are producing their beers with a lot of love and heart.

FIONA BREEN: For this beer lover, it's the smaller players that are able to make the most of Australia's new hop varieties and flavours that are the winners.

CHRIS LUKIANENKO: I think a craft beer for me is something that's got a bit of extra flavour and it's been made with that bit of love. I really like that idea.

FIONA BREEN: It's all good news for hop farmers and brewers trying to make a living out of their passion.

WILL TATCHELL: Passion is beer. Passion is also agriculture, I think. Um, as I said, I'm in a very fortunate position to be working where I am with what I am on the family farm and being able to touch base with that - those agricultural roots I think pays dividends, both within the agricultural sector, but also the brewing sector.