This particular little field has a very poor grass ley, it is on poor soil but as a result has wonderfully mixed herbage.   Orchids flourish here, these conditions suit them perfectly too.   Ancient mixed woodland surrounds this field, it has bracken along the edges in places which has been a two edged sword.

The bracken had begun to gain strength and spreading out further into the field away from the edges.  My fault because I have been delaying cutting it until after the orchids have seeded.  This has allowed it to begin to threaten a take over, thereby defeating the object of leaving the orchids to seed.

This year war has been declared, the bullet bitten and the bracken was cut twice through its growing season and the above image shows the pleasing result this October.   The plants are less dense and only 8 inches high where they were cut, whereas along the edges of the woodland it is in its natural stare and they are 4 foot high plus.

Another year or two of regular cutting should see it naturally erased and the orchids  can bloom safely once again.

In keeping with the last post   and to practice what I preach I have decided to close our hop shop from the 21st Dec to the 21st Jan.   The mid winter Solstice is my favourite day of the whole year hence 21st is the magic date!

If anyone plans to brew over the Festive Season and will be needing hops,  please make sure you get your order in before the 19th December.

Postage may be a bit erratic at that time but I can at least have them dispatched for you by the 21st.

I will be popping in with a couple of news posts  as usual during December.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported this venture and bought hops from me in 2015.     I wish you a peaceful Christmas and happy New Year.

PS Don’t forget the competition for the  ‘Be a Hop Grower for a Year’  will be drawn on 21st January 2016 when the hop shop reopens.  If you want to enter (you have time over the Christmas break to) get your names in for the draw and good luck to all who enter.

No sun – no moon! 

No morn – no noon – 

No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day. 

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, 

No comfortable feel in any member – 

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, 

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! – 

November! 

by  Thomas Hood

I have always felt this is far too negative a view of November and being a lover of our British seasons here is my take on a few of the positives for the month.

Around first week of October I begin to really look forward to the clocks going back.   The shorter days are now welcome and dark evenings put pay to spring and summer’s relentless full steam ahead, forward going busy-ness.  The pace of life slows to match the season and there is time to enjoy the little things.   Being cosy in the evening  by the fire,  no one is fed up with getting the wood in yet!    Time for a hobby, to read for pleasure rather than just work stuff,  homemade soups, walks in the mist, the leaves falling in the woods, and the smell of autumn.   Turning off the TV and electric light to use  an oil lamp instead,  to chat by the fire while sharing a specially saved beer.   Hurray for this ‘recharge your batteries’ time.   None of this happens in summer and Christmas is still some way off!

But what I didn’t know until last week was that the Danes have a word for this – ‘hygge’.

Helen Russell wrote in the Weekend section of the Sat Telegraph 24th Oct explaining exactly what hygge is for the Danes.

I wanted to mark this first year of A Bushel of Hops in some way – I didn’t want this year to simply pass without acknowledging the occasion.   So being a hop farmer it had to be something to do with growing hops and as a vital beer ingredient hopefully something which a number of home brewers might like to  share in.   I understand that a lot of home brewers already grow a hop bine in their garden but wondered if anyone would like to be a hop grower for a year by proxy?

My proposal is this  – I will keep a monthly diary,  record and photograph everything that happens to the plants and include general tips on growing hops as we go through the year.    The winner will receive regular monthly updates  of the progress of their chosen hop plants directly before the details go live on the website.      After harvesting they will also receive 1 Kg of their dried hops.   The caveat here is that now being a hop grower they will be in for the ride so nothing can be guaranteed, except that I will do my best.    Hop growing by nature can be unpredictable, their chosen hop plants may be a less vigorous variety, they can be affected by disease or weather, in which case  the winner will then get all the crop harvested if it is less than 1 Kg.   Whatever  the outcome,  you will get your hops for your home brewing super fresh, direct from the farm.   Straight from the hop garden to your door ( or even your brew pot !)  immediately after harvesting.

Join me for the good & the bad – hail damage in the hop garden,  May 2015

So………. would you like to be a hop grower for a year?

If you do wish to take part, then please fill in your details via the form below selecting the name of your preferred variety from the 4 listed below.   A winner will be randomly drawn from the hat when the shop reopens on 21st Jan 2016.

NB: This competition is only open to UK residents. Entry closes 20 January 2016.

The hop varieties to choose from are –

1 – Chinook

2 – Bullion

3 – Northern Brewer

4 – First Gold

Entry Form:

This competition is now closed.

If you wish to be kept informed of future competitions and offers then please feel free to sign up to our newsletter  on the side bar so you can be kept in the loop.

Night shift in the oast house

It is said you should never assume, but living with a hop growing family I did just that and simply assumed that everyone, especially those connected with beer or brewing knew how hops had been and were dried now.  So last month when 3 people,  2 brewers and one person who had been hand picking all his young life had all been equally surprised to learn that hops were once dried with coal and charcoal I had to re-evaluate my presumptions quick sticks.

Apologies to those who do know (please skip this next bit) but for those who don’t know or have never had cause to consider it, I will share what I have picked up from hearsay, practice and reading, and give a very brief account of what happens in an oast house.  It is the basis of how A Bushel of Hops came about so is relevant.

In the High Weald wood is plentiful, hence the Romans found it convenient to build their iron furnaces in the area.  On the family farm wood was cut in preparation for the charcoal burners to arrive during the summer.   Their camp was a corrugated tin hut on wheels similar to a shepherds hut and they would live here while they prepared the charcoal on site ready for the hop picking in September, then move on until the following year.   My husband and his mate as small boys can remember the charcoal burners well.     The men would store their screw top quart bottles of Fremlin’s beer, each bottle in a sock placed carefully in the stream next to their camp.    The charcoal stacks were built but as boys my husband and his mate never actually saw these stacks lit.   The burners were secretive and always  found the boys a job away at the crucial time, so the actual lighting always remained a mystery.   The coal came in from Wales to the local railway station where it would be collected by horse and cart.

Coal was used in the kilns for the main grunt of the hop drying time with the charcoal added towards the end of each drying to raise the temperature to ‘finish’ each load of hops.  The whole length of this drying would take on average 10 hours – 12 hours to complete.  The other difference was that hops were not loaded onto the kilns very deeply, only 6 inches maximum.  Todays modern kilns can be loaded up to 3 feet in depth, but back then they were relying on natural draught to keep the air flowing up through the bed of hops and out via the cowl.  The cowl turns in the wind, the purpose of which is to cause a slight vacuum as it keeps its back to the wind.  In effect the roundel is a giant chimney.   Air is important to any load  when drying, if hops sit on the kiln, warm and with no air passing through them, then they will just ‘stew’, begin to compost and spoil.   The hop dryers job is skilled but also in part an art.

Reek (moisture) coming off a load of hops. a lot of water vapour has to be removed on a large kiln load of hops

As hop acreage on each farm increased more throughput,  therefore more drying capacity in each kiln was required, so in order to load a bit deeper they introduced fans above the drying hops which sucked air.   It is the air passing through in balance to the depth of hops that is critical.   These fans were often run by a Lister type engine on the ground, this allowed the hops to be loaded a little more deeply and was happening around the WW2.   On the family farm when the fans in the oast house roundels had to be serviced the men remembered the Battle of Britain taking place overhead.   I am sure that produced a few scary moments with them wishing they are back on the ground!

The next stage, as growers needed even more efficiency to remain viable, was for high pressure blowing fans, as opposed to sucking fans, to be used.  Instead of above the drying floor, these were installed underneath the bed of hops.    These oil fired drying units were and still are used which force huge quantities of air up through the crop and the temperature can be accurately adjusted.   However,  Pentland Crown potatoes can no longer be baked in the ashes while you wait for the hops to dry.

Reek looks like smoke – here coming off  a modern kiln with a larger load of hops drying

So this was the start point where A Bushel of Hops was born – It was never planned, it just sort of seeded itself as an idea and grew from there along with the few heritage hop varieties I started out with just for my own interest.   As a small hop grower I would need to find a niche and it had to tick several important boxes.    It had to be separate and fingers crossed eventually viable, I can never compete with the larger growers, nor do I wish to.    I also knew I wanted to keep the business small and personal, grow a selection of British hop varieties for the home brewer,  this was something I simply enjoy doing.  The other thing that appealed strongly was that I knew I genuinely wanted to keep these hop drying skills and knowledge alive within a business, not solely as the preserve of a museum.

The up shot then ….  well knitting would have been easier and it would have been far more sensible and certainly less stressful at times.    But hop growing comes with a warning – it is addictive.     And is it immensely exciting?  yes definitely,    is it unpredictable, never once boring and endlessly fascinating with loads more to learn?… of course without any doubt.

As Mark Tranter of Burning Sky Brewery succinctly summed it up saying “sometimes if you have an itch, you just have to scratch it”!