The bitter reality for Colorado Native Lager is that Colorado doesn’t grow enough hops. But it’s trying.

As soon as today, a batch of Colorado Native made with homegrown hops will hit store shelves, thanks to the efforts of 130 volunteer growers.

A year ago, AC Golden Brewing put out an invitation to its Facebook fans to accept a free hops rhizome, plant it and donate the harvested crop to the brewer.

The intent was to get AC Golden closer to its goal of producing a beer with all-Colorado ingredients. It’s 99.89 percent local with Colorado barley, water and yeast. The missing fraction is hops — the flowery green herb that gives beer its sublime bitterness.

Not enough hops are produced in Colorado to meet demand. Thus the call for volunteers.

“I really didn’t expect anything close to the response we got. I was amazed,” said Glenn Knippenberg, president of AC Golden, a small-batch unit of beer giant MillerCoors.

The brewer gave away 509 rhizomes, or rootstocks. Many withered, despite the best efforts of their growers.

The survivors yielded a modest first-year harvest of 56 pounds. Hops plants typically don’t produce full crops until they are 3 years old.

The homegrown output is a minuscule portion of the more than 6,000 pounds of hops used each year in Colorado Native.

But the growers will now have pride of ownership in a batch of 827 cases that carry a code date of “MAR2012” on the bottlenecks.

“I will definitely be picking up a six-pack of ‘my’ beer as soon as it comes out,” said grower K.C. Dunstan of Edgewater.

“I realize my hops are not a significant amount in the overall amount needed to make Colorado Native, but it was fun to be part of such an innovative idea,” said Dan McCasky of Arvada.

Homebrewer Mike Hengel of Littleton said that when he heard of the concept, “I thought, ‘Why not?’ I can claim to my friends that I am under contract to Coors for hop production.”

Hengel chuckled about his small harvest — “an embarrassingly pitiful six really tiny hop cones.”

The growers’ reward is a patch identifying them as a Colorado Native hops producer and free beer provided at a series of “hop drop” parties.

Knippenberg of AC Golden said he expects bigger volunteer harvests in coming years. In addition, he said, the amount of commercially grown hops on Colorado’s Western Slope is increasing enough that the brewer might reach its target of all-Colorado ingredients.

“We don’t feel comfortable saying it’s 100 percent if it’s not actually 100 percent,” he said. “That’s what we’re shooting for.”

Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com

What they’re saying

Not all of the volunteer hops growers for Colorado Native Lager proved to be hopmeisters. Some quotes sent to the brewer from the less-successful growers:

“I am a hops flop. Sorry. I’ll keep drinking beer to ease the sorrow.”

“Here are our hops (delivered in a snack-size plastic bag). We will be keeping our day jobs.”

“I feel more like a hop killer than a hop grower.”

“Greetings from the attempted hop growing in Indian Hills. The elk totally ate them.”

“I have the saddest news. My hops did not survive. It appears they drowned.”

“I killed my hops plant a few months ago. I didn’t mean to, of course.”

“My hops have gone to beer heaven.”