COOPERSVILLE, MI - For the owners of Pure Mitten Hops, raising the flower where the art of brewing beer begins involves a marriage of hand labor, imported equipment and family.

On a recent afternoon, Justin Dieleman and his brother-in-law, Jay Camp, stood on an elevated platform on a trailer being slowly pulled across their hop yard by tractor driven by Justin's sister, Andrea.

Justin and Jay were quickly tying up long strands of twine made of coconut imported from Sri Lanka to cables suspended 18 feet over the rows of hop plants below. They had to work fast to set the ropes at three feet to match the plants below.

Behind them, Justin's father, Morrie, attached the two of the ropes and used a hand tool to embed the ropes into the middle of each hop plant.

"They'll grow 18 feet in six weeks. They will grow 12 inches overnight," says Justin's mom and Morrie's wife, Mary Dieleman, who is giving a tour of the hop yard.

Their 11,000 hop plants won't grow and bear flowers for making beer until the 22,000 ropes are tied to trellises in their hop yard. That's a labor intensive job to which the Dielemans will dedicate themselves for the next two weeks.

If they don't get the runners up for the vines, the perennial hop plants will run along the ground, casting out rhizomes and runners that can't be harvested later this summer, says Mary Dieleman, who lives in Grand Rapids but grew up on a nearby cattle farm south of Coopersville.

Pure Mitten Hops is one of several Michigan farms that are leading a renaissance of commercial hop operations in the state. Most hops in the U.S. are grown in the Pacific Northwest, where more than 35,000 acres were in production in 2013, according to Michigan State University's Extension Service.

Michigan has become a distant fourth behind Washington, Oregon and Idaho with more than 400 acres in production, according to the extension service. But the growth in demand from the state's growing craft beer industry has driven up interest among growers, who began raising hops in the Traverse City area in 2008.

Michigan's climate is ideal because hops grow best between the 42nd and 45th parallel in the northern and southern hemispheres, Mary Dieleman says.

That puts their Ottawa County farm and most farms in the northern Lower Peninsula in that sweet spot, says Dieleman, who predicts the industry will continue to grow in Michigan.

The Dielemans are planning to set 11 acres of hops this year with plans to set 20 acres next year. They have several varieties planted and hope to add several more to the 30-acre plot they bought three years ago from a neighboring farmer.

Unlike most field crops, hops are perennial plants that come back year after year for up to 20 years, provided they have trellis systems on which to grow.

The Dielemans started from scratch, digging poles and string cable for each year's crops. They bought an old truck with a giant post hole digger from a utility to set the poles for their trellises.

They also had to buy specialized equipment to remove the hop flowers from the vines and twines they cut down in the late summer. Their first harvester was purchased from Germany, shipped over in a container and reassembled.

Now they're awaiting a second larger harvester that will take the hops off the vines at twice the rate. Not only will it speed up the harvest, but they can also service other hop growers who are springing up in West Michigan, Mary Dieleman says.

They also have installed a giant dryer to take the moisture out of the hops within hours of their harvest. Their custom dryer, designed by local welding shop owner Phil Brown, has three stages to evenly dry out the hops without creating hot spots.

The dried hops are then baled into 120-pound bales that are sold to local craft brewers or wholesalers who sell to home brewers and craft brewers, who use the hops for aroma and bittering to counteract the sweetness of the malts, another main ingredient..

Although prices vary depending on the demand by the brewing industry, Mary Dieleman says their hops can fetch up to $12 a pound. Of the six varieties they currently raise, "Crystal" and "Mackinac" are the big sellers right now, she says.