Amy Miller Photography
Derrick Morse and Mark Jones
Sitting on the sideboard of a bulldozer as it rolls across muddy red clay, I’m practically grabbing the machine’s operator, Mark Jones, trying to hold on.
The vibrations are teeth rattling. But, after a week of heavy spring rains, this is the only method of getting down to the manmade peninsula that looks out over the back half of the Hop Springs property in Murfreesboro. We crest the rise, and he cuts the engine.
Once the ear-ringing subsides, it’s peaceful. The wind bends the tawny marsh grasses below. In the distance, a perimeter of trees lines the 83-acre property, and, in the mid-ground, thickets of blackberry bushes show tufts of green.
“I can see it finished from day one—don’t ask me how,” Jones says, eyes hid by wrap-around sunglasses.
Listening to him talk about it, I can see it, too. Over there, a disc golf course designed by world-class athletes. And, here, after damming the sliver of spring-fed creek that bisects the property, a five-acre pond. An amphitheatre over there that will host both local and national acts. Summer movie nights with a giant projection screen. A dog park.
The Hop Springs project is Jones’ brainchild, and its scope dwarfs any other operation like it in Middle Tennessee.
A large-scale landscape architect by trade, he says, “This is a culmination of all those ideas.”
The property, a former cow pasture, will be a destination brewery with a strong educational component, working hand-in-glove with nearby Middle Tennessee State University. Its centerpiece, a massive brewery shared by his company Life Is Brewing’s three labels (Mantra; the yearling Steel Barrel; and the new Humulus Project), will annually produce a maximum 150,000 barrels, or, in layman’s terms, 4.65 million gallons.
But it’s not just another brewery—in Nashville’s city limits there are already 15, with more in neighboring towns. Hop Springs, to paraphrase Hubert Selby, Jr., will be a “brewery-and,” or a place you visit to do other things, and, while you’re there, have a few beers.
“I’ve always enjoyed Arrington [Vineyards], but I get bored to tears,” Jones says, with a laugh. “I love talking to my wife, but give me a game. Don’t quote this,” he says, dryly, with full expectation that I will, “but this is Arrington on steroids.”
While the plans for Hop Springs have been five years in the works, the start of its story began 10 years ago, with a mild-manner professor named Tony Johnston, who holds a Ph.D. in grape and wine production from the University of Arkansas. Johnston was in a meeting with his then-new MTSU provost, who informed Johnston about his plans to begin a brewing program.
“And I laughed,” Johnston, who is now in his 23rd year at the school, says. “There’s significant reluctance to do anything from a state level with anything related to alcohol.” So, that’s where the idea remained: just an idea.
During this dormant period, Jones was getting snubbed by wine snobs and laughed out of a craft brewery for drinking a Miller Lite. The latter was how Jones met his eventual business partner and brewmaster, Derrick Morse. Morse, then heading the Cool Springs Brewery, took on Jones and his mass-produced-beer-loving palate as a personal challenge.
“Now, I can’t even drink a beer without analyzing the characteristics, like you would a good dish by a chef,” Jones says. “And I have not had a Miller Lite in six years,” he continues. “It’s not beer—don’t quote that—it’s a flavored water. I guess you really don’t identify flavors until somebody educates you.”
The confluence of worlds came three years ago, when Jones, an MTSU grad well out of touch with his alumni association, reached out to his alma mater for a new project. Morse, an award-winning brewer, had helped launched Mantra, and Hop Springs had two years of planning behind it. Jones had even mostly settled on a property in Thompson's Station. All he needed were interns.
Shortly before Jones called, Johnston’s provost announced that yes, finally, a fermentation program—the original idea tweaked so that it wouldn’t run afoul of conservative legislators—was going forward. When Jones called, completely oblivious, Johnston’s wheels started turning.
“I thought, ‘I can have myself and my students drive all the way to Thompson’s Station,” Johnston says, “or I can try to get your butt over here in Rutherford County.”
Johnston recommended a few locations, and the current property, a former Civil War staging area and longtime cow pasture, was the first Jones looked at. It was also the last.
“I needed land to finish my vision,” Jones says. “I needed land to do exactly what I wanted to do.”
While Hop Springs is massive in its size and scope, possibly its greatest ambition is to create some of its beers with interns plucked straight from MTSU’s fermentation major, which officially launched in the fall of 2017. After graduating from a one-barrel setup on campus, students will transition to a three-barrel student system on Hop Springs, and, as interns, finish with 60-barrel tanks.
Some are getting an early start. Jordan Bevill, a Navy vet and Murfreesboro native, was a mechatronics engineer when he met Johnston at an event last year. After entering the fermentation program’s inaugural class, he began interning with Morse at Mantra and now works for him.
“I’m leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, because I understand the hard work that it requires to be in a brewery, and I also am learning—and have learned—a significant amount in the classroom,” Bevill says. “No one else in the country can do that except students at MTSU.”
Jones and I stare out at the land from the cab of the bulldozer. Behind us, up the hill, the silver studs of the taproom are visible—by the time this goes to print, it will be open and pouring. The first beer brewed onsite will be out by October, and the following year will see the amphitheater’s construction. Sure, right now, it’s just mostly wild land, but it’s being shaped by a strong vision.
We pause to look a little longer. Then: “You ever seen hogs mate? They go about a hundred feet in the air,” Jones says. He takes a beat. “Don’t put that in your notes.”