I'd imagine that the hops are harvested by machine so you get whatever is loose on the plant at the time of picking as well.

I've heared that "hand picked" is beginning to appear on some wine labels.


>Whew! At least good beer doesn't have that... Right? Right?!
>
>>A lot of grapes are machine picked these days by machines that suck up anything loose on the vine. That can apparently include the smaller varieties of wildlife so your wine (if you drink it) also may have more body than you thought.
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>>>SNIP
>>>> And coffee is the only taste that can't be synthesized in a lab, because it has about 2000 components.
>>>
>>>Not to mention the hundreds of littel creepy crawlys that add protein to the mixture! I visited a coffee plantation in both Panama and Mexico and both sites had almost as many bugs crawling around the sun-dried beans as there were beans! Now I know why Panamanian coffee tastes so good... :o)
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>>I