#06 Hops
Best of British Hops…
With the majority of UK breweries favouring powerful imported US hops for their hop forward beers, we thought a focus on using British hops could reduce the overall embodied energy used to produce our beers. In sourcing British hops we can not only produce more unique beers using sometimes unusual hop choices, but we can promote British hop businesses at the same time! Win win! 👏
We also wanted to experiment with growing our own hops to try green-hopping, how hard could it be?! With some spare space we had down the back of the raised beds we thought it would be a perfect place to try growing a few varieties of hops against the garage wall, catching the full sun throughout the day.
We got hold of some British hop variety rhizomes from essentiallyhops.co.uk early winter and planted them straight away to let them settle into their new home. Spring arrived and so did the new shoots! The plants quickly grew and extended upwards along the coir string.
In the warmer months the bines were growing almost a foot a day! Eventually they reached their maximum height and started sprouting hops after a long wait.
When the plants stopped growing and producing new hops and the leaves were starting to turn we took them down to see what we could harvest. There were a few small hops but a pretty poor result from the first year. Reading into hop growing it normally takes a few years for the roots to establish and be able to harvest the hops for brewing so fingers crossed next year will be more productive! 🤞
