OUR TEAM 

 

Jeff Steinman – Hops Manager 

Jeff Steinman is a lifelong plant geek and craft beer fanatic. He graduated from MSU in 1994 with a B.S. in Horticulture. Jeff’s background is in the greenhouse, nursery and landscape realms. In 2007, he and his wife, Bonnie, began their discovery of the love of hops with a purchase of a handful of rhizomes for their backyard. From 2009-2011, they carried out building and experimenting on 3/5 of an acre organic hop farm, utilizing a NCR-SARE micro-grant and trialing biological disease and insect control on organic hops. In 2012, Hop Head Farms, LLC was born. In three very fast paced years they built the nation’s first state of the art German/American hybrid hop harvesting and processing facility and a 30 acre hop farm in Hickory Corners, Mich. Jeff is a founding member and former 4 year chairperson of Hop Growers of Michigan, a 501(c)5 non-profit, established to support the growing Michigan hop industry. Also in 2014, Hop Head Farms, LLC was sold to Ceres Partners of Massachusetts, who now operate and manage over 150 acres in southwest Michigan. Jeff has since started Alpha Wolf Diversified Services, LLC, a firm specializing in horticultural crops with an emphasis on hops and other specialty crops. The company assists clients with tailor made programs and systems in order to maximize the quality of their products by utilizing sound and sustainable approaches with an emphasis on food safety. He is happy to be currently assisting with the CL Hop Farm’s planned expansion and facilities build out.

 

Andrew Kowalewicz – Commercial Director 

Andrew brings 20+ years of finance and project management experience to CL Enterprises LLC.   Most recently, Andrew has been leading business development for CL Hops, a CL Enterprises company in specialty hops farming.  Prior to that, Andrew had been involved with the development of a sister company, Tangled Roots Brewing Company.  In his role as a Director of Finance at Tangled Roots, Andrew co-managed the development of the beer business and is actively working on completing the business link of the “Farm to Foam” concept between the hop yard and the beer business.  The commercial plan for both projects is to create a vertically integrated hop-beer business, with emphasis on local farming, local ingredient production and regional beer, as well as hops distribution.

Previous roles in Andrew’s portfolio include management of multiple start-up projects for the parent company, CL Enterprises; as well as a successful career in commercial banking and investments.