A Russian pagan republic championed hops before microbreweries went mainstream – now it wants to be back on the global beer map, The Calvert Journal reports

Cheboksary is only a night train ride away from Russia’s capital but it could be on another planet. By 10am the temperature is already approaching the high twenties, its trees are decorated with ribbons and animal bones, and shop windows are painted with intricate geometric designs.

The city is the capital of the Chuvashia Republic, a place that has for centuries defied Russian Christian hegemony and where locals still conduct colourful pagan rituals and follow a pantheon of gods.

The republic is also one of the world’s oldest beer-producing regions, with a tradition of harvesting hops and drinking beer as part of their religious worship.

Now, in a bid to return to its former glory as a Soviet-era hop superpower, local scientists and brewers are hoping that the craze for microbreweries springing up from Moscow and St Petersburg could once again bring investment to Chuvash’s farms.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Celebrations in Cheboksary, Russia’s pagan heartland. Illustration: Ivan Mikhailov

Beer revolution

While American brewers experimenting with hops in the 1970s have been credited with kickstarting the global craft beer revolution, few people know that the movement might not have been possible without scientists working in Chuvash during Soviet times.

Thanks to its historic love of beer and its unique microclimate – steep terrains and hot summers – Chuvashia was the obvious location to produce beer to quench the thirst of the industrial workers across the USSR, quickly transforming the Republic into a hop-growing superpower.

By the late 1980s, local sovkhozes (state farms) were producing 95% of all hops for the Soviet Union’s beer. Known locally as Chuvashia’s “green gold”, hops were so ubiquitous they appeared in everything from ice-cream to shampoo.

Hop-farming quickly became a prestigious scientific discipline which demanded its own bureaucratic hierarchy. The first Soviet hop research institute was established just outside Cheboksary.

One of the region’s signature products – the flavoursome Serebryanka – later inspired scientists at the University of Oregon to breed Cascade, a citrus-flavoured hop which has now become popular with craft brewers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sampling today’s local beers. Photograph: Ivan Mikhailov/Calvert Journal

Post Soviet decline

But the glory days weren’t to last. When the USSR collapsed in the early 1990s, Chuvashia’s hop empire followed suit, unable to compete with the international beer giants flooding the Russian market and sweeping away local factories.

In the 1980s there were 35,000 acres of hop fields in Chuvashia, today that number is down to just 200. Much of the remaining crop is looked after by the Chuvash Hop Institute, which sees the resurgence of artisanal breweries as an opportunity to promote the region as a quality supplier of hops.

The institute’s director, Andrey Fadeev, is optimistic. “The whole world is going crazy about aromatic hops. We can’t lose this opportunity,” he says.

He’d like some of the bigger beer factories inthe Urals and Siberia to consider Chuvashia as a viable national alternative to European suppliers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrey Fadeev in his hop fields. Photograph: Ivan Mikhailov/Calvert Journal

The hop institute has recently restored some of the machines in its brewery and is building an alliance with a brand-new factory in Tsvilisk to process delicate raw hops into long-lasting pellets which are more compact and easier to transport.

But it doesn’t have a working brewery, and Fadeev concedes that there is a lot more work to be done to restore the area to its former superpower status. “We need hundreds of tractors, modern equipment, young folks, ” he says.

The hop vault

Even if it is not currently making beer, hops are still being cultivated and Fadeev offers a tour around one of the institute’s fields outside of Tsivilsk, a town 20 miles (32km) away from Cheboksary.

The crops are tended to manually by a small group of scientists-cum-farmers, who are mostly women. They study and take care of the plants as the temperatures hit the mid-thirties.

Zoya Nikonova is one of the academics who has spent most of her life preserving the legacy of Chuvash hops. “We grow hundreds of hops which we bring to Chuvashia from all over the world – from New Zealand to Germany,” she explains .



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zoya Nikonova, a custodian of Chuvash hop treasures. Photograph: Ivan Mikhailov/Calvert Journal

Nikonova compares their work to Svalbard’s global seed vault in its mission to sustain a wide variety of plants for future generations – including the legendary Serebyanka.

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The semi-wild breed with “hints of blackcurrant” hasn’t been efficient to grow, Nikonov says, pointing a a row of indiscreet pale-looking stems of a plant that kicked off the craft beer revolution.

As the team at the institute works to preserve the history of the glory days, there are signs around the region that the locals have never forgotten their “green gold”.

Many are skilled home-brewers and beer is often presented as a gift at weddings and important occasions including Seren, a pagan holiday on which evil spirits are expelled with barrels of alcohol and wild dancing.

A version of this article first appeared on The Calvert Journal, a guide to the new east