Stuck for beer lover’s gift ideas for Christmas.We have our second run of the British Hops tea towels which means we can pass on the lower price of £9 each or £24.00 for a pack of 3. If you want a little stocking filler for the beer lover or home brewer in your life, this could be ideal, just right to hang up in the brewing room, shed or polish your glasses. Wrap up that bottle of beer to make it an even more special gift. Sustainable wrapping paper, nothing to throw away! They are 100% cotton, printed and made in UK and even better a donation from each sale goes to British Hop Research.
100gm vac packed hops
British Hops Tea Towel
Other beer lover’s gift ideas for Christmas are our of course our home grown hops. Available direct from the farm, in 1Kg blocks, these vacuum packed blocks are ideal for the keen home-brewer or a brewing group who wish to share. So hurry if you want one of these, they offer great value and we only have few left.We also have a 500gm pack option available in a few varieties, if you have a favourite hop variety then these too offer better value. Then of course there are the 100gm vacuum packs perfect for popping in a freezer ready for 2019.
Remember this year our shop closes on 21st December for the Christmas break so if you are wanting to brew over the Christmas holiday then do please order in good time.
We are pleased to announce our special offer of hops for home brewing in 1Kg blocks. These blocks are aimed at the keen home brewer or they could be shared within a brewing group. I understand that home brewers often want to buy larger quantities to benefit from a more favourable pricing structure. Hence this special offer which is for a trial period only to see how this idea is received.
Please note – with this special offer of hops for home brewing in 1Kg blocks, each block can only be ordered individually and posted singly. I reserve the right to withdraw this offer if I need to preserve 100gm stocks of any variety for our smaller home brewing customers.
Hop picking is over for another year, the crop has been harvested and dried which means A Bushel of Hop’s Shop is now open for this season’s hops. My hops are not bought in, they are grown and packaged on the farm. Packaging begins as soon as hop picking is finished to get the freshest, ‘hop-garden to brew-pot’, hops possible for the home brewer.
After listening to brewers, the other change instigated this year is our uprated packaging. Even though I only sell hops from the current season, this new 100% foil packaging allows hops to remain even more freshly vacuum packed as it prevents all ingress of light and oxygen. It is still important that packets are stored in a cool place or they can be frozen.
I also understand that some home brewers believe they sometimes get the raw end of the deal where hops are concerned when compared to the larger breweries. My primary aim at A Bushel of Hops is to grow and supply the home brewer. To this end I grow small quantities of different varieties, some not normally available elsewhere and sometimes in minute quantities from only a couple of plants. As an English hop grower it is important to me that home brewers can enjoy freshly packed English grown hops. This is the reason I put a ‘use by date’ on all my hops, to keep in line with my own commitment, to only sell the current seasons hops policy.
It is hop twiddling time once again in the hop gardens of England and as always a lovely time of year as the countryside greens up and pings back into life. The cooler weather has slowed down this growth, hence we are well on top of the hop twiddling (or hop training as it is also known). This can change rapidly when the temperature rises, then the bines will shoot up the strings like long dogs; they can grow 6 inches in length on a warm night.
Each hop is trained a minimum of 3 times through the growing season. Twiddling hops is not difficult, it just takes time to do each one and as with all ‘hop’ work it needs a few people to make the day swing along more companionably and to see your progress at the end of each day. Working alone in a hop garden makes any progress seem infinitesimally minute.
With the typical Admiral hop shown here, you first need to know how many bines you will need to put up, the number required depends on the variety being grown. A quick cursory glance will then show if you have plenty to choose from, it is usually 6 or 8 to go up four strings. The temptation is always to put too many up rather than too few, one for luck is not to be recommended!
This is how I like to twiddle, but other people will have their own way and the end result should be the same. First of all I pull out the very long coarse first bines, they aren’t wanted so best get them out of the way before you start. It is thought that the first growth probably contains mildews which overwinter in these first buds, therefore it’s another reason not to use them. I then select finer bines of the right length, preferably of a fairly uniform length, approx 14 – 18 inches long which is enough for two or three good turns up the string. It is best to select them from the middle of the plant if possible, this keeps the hills nicely contained because if you were to take a bine from a runner away from the base of the hop hill this risks getting caught in a tractor tyre later in the season and then broken off.
I do a quick check for a long narrow head on each bine, then if you have 2 bines per string you can wind both up each string together. They need to go up the string clockwise, hops follow the sun unlike runner beans which grow in an anti-clockwise direction. If they happen to be put round the wrong way, by next morning they will have unwound themselves. It is good to get them tucked in firmly at the base before you twist them up onto the strings, this is to prevent them being dislodged if you get a windy day before they have really got underway properly. Like the one pictured the plants next to hop poles tend to become stronger plants, possibly they never get run over by a tractor at harvest or it could be they are just more protected.
If the weather is cold and breezy then some varieties will snap easily, if this happens you need to take that bine out and replace it with another which has a head. Warm temperatures are simply kinder for both people and hops.
That is all there is to it really, you pull out the rest of the unwanted bines, then move on to the next hill.
Rules are simple – choose fine bines, make sure they have heads on , decide how many you need for each hop hill and stick to that number. Twist them clockwise up the strings then pull out the rest and move on. Below shows there are plenty more to be twiddled yet, they just need to grow a little bit more!
This week I spotted a few Spanish Bells growing fairly close to a bluebell wood. They were probably escapees from nearby cottages but I have dug the bulbs up now and they have been destroyed. We did not want them cross pollinating with the native bluebells.
The winter storms had also dislodged two Barn Owl boxes. Barn Owls are a protected species, so after having the situation checked by the Barn Owl Trust we are now able to fix one back in situ knowing there are no eggs. The other has tree ducks nesting in it so that will be secured later in the summer. Barn owls have been successful around the High Weald in the past, this is probably due to plenty of grassland and some margins close to the boxes which were left rough to encourage short tailed voles. It is wonderful to watch a barn owl flying silently as it hunts at dusk.
The laid back feel of the outdoor winter work for the hop grower suddenly ended, stringing and banding are underway but with the delivery of the new hop setts, its all change and we are up on our starting blocks for the off. Growing hops should come with an Official Government Health Warning, it can be addictive. Ashley you have been warned! That withstanding I really hope you enjoy our year ahead and the end product.
Yesterday 11th February was a beautiful February day, an early ground frost then the sun shone, a perfect day to be outside to start planting hop setts – my friend and I even got our jackets off. The soft golden sunshine of February to plant out the First Gold hops was very apt, golden light on these First gold hop setts felt like a good omen.
All the hop setts arrived in perfect condition. Thank you to Stephen Wright who always produces such wonderful quality setts.
The First Gold hop setts were planted out second as that was the space I had chosen for them, leaving the Northern Brewer hops needing to be planted first. Ideally of course the ground could have been drier, but although very sticky on top, it was not too bad once underneath that first yukky layer. Wealden clay makes it easy at times to think wistfully of the lighter Suffolk soil where these hop setts were grown – we are either soggy or like concrete with only brief windows of ‘just right’ in between these extremes!
The other varieties being planted this year are Chinook hops and Bullion hops. Four very different hop varieties to brew with, seemingly different looking setts and probably four very different varieties with their own quirks to test a hop grower. Growing hops is never boring.
We are doing a trial run for a slightly different style of design for this new hop garden, it requires a different layout for the hop hills when planting. It remains to be seen how successful ( or not! ) this will be but unless you try you don’t know. However it has also meant working out a new hop stringing configuration, which we have nicknamed the Sussex Zig Zag. A plus for this Zig Zag method of growing hops is that it allows plenty of air around the growing bines. In hop gardens strung using the Umbrella method of stringing, the plants are set out at 6’6”, a coincidence that is exactly 2 metres in today’s metric language. Growing hops on the Zig Zag design each hill is planted alternately with 3’3” spacing up a line. But because they are planted alternately either side of the centre line each plant is at least 6’6” from it’s neighbour. The screw pegs are laid out to mark the planting positions for the hop setts and will stay there permanently ready for stringing.
Hopefully this sketch will this make clearer.
I so love young hops, these new First Gold hop setts for planting now have kicked off that full of promise ‘spring is here’ feeling!
However, for a hop grower I am not the fastest planter, I confess to rescuing earthworms as I see them, then placing them back on the soft soil afterwards. I know I am not alone in being unable to knowingly chop a worm in two. On the radio I once heard a remark by someone who said “I could never be friends with someone who deliberately trod on an earthworm” Hear hear to that. But I do love to be hands on and feel the soil. It’s satisfying to see each hop sett nestled in with just the buds showing. It is important not to plant them too deeply. The Northern Brewer hop variety and First Gold hop setts were all planted, then spot on cue last night we had heavy rain to settle them in.
A First Gold hop sett planted with buds just showing
Whilst servicing goes on throughout the year on any farm, winter is the time for repairs or any major maintenance jobs. This year the hand hop press, which was a very special gift, needed repairing. This ancient J L Larkworthy from Worcestershire wasn’t exactly broken but when it was used last September for the first time since 1982, it had thrown up a problem that definitely needed fixing before next year.
The hop press works by using the inherent weight of its stem combined with its gearing. The hop pocket is supported underneath by a sling below, the top being secured by a ring at floor level and when the empty pocket is filled up with loose dried hops, the press is put out of gear allowing the pan to fall utilising gravity and its own weight to do the initial stage of each pressing for you. You then put it back into gear and wind down the handle to apply the final pressure needed on each pressing before winding it back up to repeat the process all over again.
You simply repeat this sequence until the hop pocket is full of pressed hops. Each pocket will usually take 8 to 12 pressings to fill, depending on the variety of hops. The pocket is then sewn up and dropped out to the chamber below in a traditional oast and the next pocket put in. In a modern oast, pockets are often pressed into a hole in the concrete floor and then winched out. These days pockets are in fact fast being superseded by square bales which are smaller, easier to lift and move on pallets and more efficient to stack in a warehouse.
What’s to go wrong? Well nothing one would imagine with a hand winding mechanism, all that is needed is to keep the hop press well oiled. However, the out-of-gear initial ‘free fall’ is an important part of the process as hand winding throughout the whole process would make the work painfully slow and tedious, hence you want the press to do what it was designed to do, which is a good percentage of the work for you. The large wheel here weaved out of alignment by an inch, so naturally we thought the cast iron wheel itself was slightly warped. That in itself, though not perfect would have been fine.
However, when using it with hops underneath, it was the first time it was able to be put out of gear to free fall – omg what was that? there was a horrible noise as the cogs on the outside of the large wheel hit the edges of the cast iron casing which hold the gearing, then as the wheel weaved lopsidedly an inch to the other side it touched the main gear cog. Each of these contacts was by only a smidge, but a smidge would be just enough to cause the cast iron teeth to shear off eventually, hence it was top of the list of priority ‘get fixed this winter’ jobs. Oddly it did not hit the sides when it was wound throughout by hand.
The large wheel was removed along with the shaft but it was not the wheel that was bent as we had thought, it was only the very end of the shaft which protrudes from the main press body to hold the large drive wheel, it was barely noticeable at a quick glance.
This press was built as a hand press around 1900, converted to be used as an electrically operated press in 1970 it was used as such up until1982. The forces are much greater when powered by an electric motor, hence it is most likely that over this 12 year period with these extra forces, this was when the slight bend at the shaft end occurred. This did not show up until it was brought out of retirement and converted back to be used as a hand hop press 33 years later. I do not think there are many or indeed any hand presses being used nowadays, they would simply not be efficient on any large farm.
We took the large drive wheel and shaft to a local engineering firm to be straightened as much as possible and a new key-way was rebuilt.
The wheel will always show a very slight weave but this is quite acceptable, the shaft is still original, it is part of its history now and it no longer hits other parts of the frame, so does not matter.
Taking things off an old press is one thing but reassembly is quite another, it does not go exactly as you think it should and once the shaft had been straightened it had knock on effect on other bolts and alignment of the metal fixings. With the wheel off my husband had put on the original handle that had to be cut off when the hop press was electrified.
Beautiful, now fully resorted it’s as good as new and rearing to go.
This wry extract is from a family poem from where the press came from, it was written in 1970 – this same press gets a mention, as does the nightmare every grower dreads, of having a hop garden down ……
I am now on dangerous ground, as the saying warns ‘Fool’s rush in where Angels fear to tread’, so this Angel is treading very very carefully! I fully respect that everyone has their own special method to produce their perfect craft beer at home and I am certainly not giving any advise but will only explain my husband’s beer making process and show you the very basic kit which he uses, should anyone be interested.
My husband is a home brewer, but being a farmer first and foremost with the ‘make, mend and do’ attitude firmly ingrained into his psyche, whilst he has often looked longingly at the Braumeister style apparatus, he remains stoically loyal to the very basic beer brewing kit he already has. You don’t need any fancy brew kit to get going with the beer making process. The main components of his home brew hardware did not start out life as beer brewing equipment at all, but has been reinvented for purpose and he would be loathe to change it – it works well, therefore he reckons if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!
His beer brewing equipment is –
2 stainless steel redundant ex milk buckets, (one for the brewing and one for the fermentation vessel)
An old tin bath, which is topped off by an even more ancient gas stove that lives outside (under cover of course) A practical plus for this stove is that the steam during the hour long rolling boil, all happens outdoors and not in the kitchen. Another plus for his beer brewing equipment is the simplicity of cleaning it and how little equipment there actually is to clean.
A glass hydrometer was a survivor from years ago, during our brief and very variable sortie into wine making
A stainless steel strainer we already had. This strainer has now been requisitioned by the brewing department.
New kit purchased was:
a thermometer
tubing for syphoning
nylon voile for the bags. Bags were actually made from fine mesh nylon curtaining which is perfect. They are best sewn up to approximately to fit the container being used. You just need to make sure the bag is kept off the bottom of your vessel whilst the heat is on, an upturned colander or similar will suffice.
He brews 10 litres at a time rather than what I understand to be the more normal 20 litres. The theory behind these 10 litre brews is that the buckets are easier to lift and recipes can be tweaked or a completely different home beer recipe tried without any concern that you may have lot of beer you do not like. This has only been the case once so far, he over-hopped a brew that made American IPA’s look insipid! I thought my hair would curl, but it did make an excellent shandy.
When he first came across about the Australian ‘brew in a bag’ method he thought it sounded rather corny, but after trying it, this method is no gimmick. The basic rules for all brewing are simple – have scrupulously clean equipment and bottles, good quality ingredients, accurate temperatures, accurate timings and in this case careful removal of the bag of malt so it can drain naturally. Resisting the temptation to give it a squeeze.
I am sure everyone has their own very personal preferences to technique, hence my caution writing about this but if the proof of the pudding is in the eating (or drinking in this case!) then this method has a full 10/10 and big thumbs up from me.
I am shortly to have a tentative foray in to the world of brewing but using hops and no malt! But that will be for another time.
Quick guide to the easy home beer making process ‘BREW IN A BAG’ method with one of my husbands recipes
NB -To end up with approx 9 litres to bottle you need to start with 13 litres of water
Ingredients for his American Light Bitter
1.5kg pale malted barley
75gm crystal malt
130gm Polenta
2ozs Goldings hops
1oz Cascade hops
Halfera packet of S-05 yeast
Method
*Bring 13 litres water to 67C
*Put malts and polenta in the voile bag, gently lower and prod carefully down to wet grains (you do not want to introduce any air at this point) Tie top of bag securely to top of the brew vessel. Steep for 70 mins at 67C. You can turn off heat if needs be to keep temperature level.
*Remove bag of malt and allow to drain into the vessel. Do not squeeze, it is very tempting! but DON’T DO IT!
*Bring wort to a rolling boil for 1 hour in total, adding 1oz golding hops immediately boiling point is reached.
After 30 mins add 1oz Goldings hops then for the last 10 mins of the boil add the Cascade hops.
* Strain hops from wort and immediately cool as quickly as possible to 25C. The old tin bath is perfect here. To help wort oxygenate at this stage the wort can be strained to and fro between both stainless steel vessels a few times. This also helps speed the cooling.
*Once at 25C stand vessel in warm environment to ferment and add yeast. My husband uses the open top method with this vessel, covering it with a nylon cover then a clean cotton cloth.
Bottled when hydrometer shows it is ready or after about 10 days.
If you are interested to see this home beer making process of ‘brewing in a bag’ this lady has it down to a fine art.
When purchasing a trug you want the real McCoy, sturdy and beautiful, but also supremely practical to use.
The genuine article is made in Sussex with cleaved sweet chestnut and cricket bat willow, it will last a lifetime. This is recycling at it best, made with left over willow from local cricket bat makers and sweet chestnut from coppiced woodland in the area. Even the left over shavings from making the trugs are used, nothing is wasted. There are cheaper ply wood impostors on the market, but their price is really their only attraction. They may be trug shaped, and yes some are made in Sussex but they are not made with the traditional materials and like the old saying goes “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”, the real deal is the real thing.
I am super fortunate to live relatively close to two master trug makers Richard Bingham who made the bushel trug pictured earlier on this website with my fabric in and Charlie Groves who has his own shop near Lewes in East Sussex. The bushel trug is not easy to find as it needs much longer lengths of cricket bat willow than are normally available for the boards. It does not have feet. It is a very workmanlike size originally made for farm produce, we used one for many years to measure corn for tipping into an old Massey Ferguson drill.
I mentioned earlier this month that I had received 2 super exciting surprise gifts, each being a prototype. One of these was a half bushel trug from Charlie which was the prototype for the limited edition of trugs produced especially for the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show ‘A Trugmakers Garden’ which won a coveted Gold Medal.
1/2 Bushel Traditionally Dried Hops for Home Brewing
During Chelsea, Charlie was present with Sarah from the Truggery at Herstmonceux to demonstrate trug making on site. The half bushel trug has feet but the shape is much deeper than usual and the actual ‘basket’ has 11 boards instead of the normal 5 or 7 .depending on size. It was made as a copy of an old one found in a redundant farm building. You can read about the discovery of the old bushel trug here.
Professional trug makers like many other specialist craftsmen do not find it easy to make a living from their craft and as such are a dying breed (There are only 5 craftsmen in the world left now making traditional Sussex trugs). Proactively, to try to redress this trend they have joined forces to apply for official certification. If successful they will then be able to give a guarantee that their produce is the genuine article. This will hopefully cull out any interlopers and highlight the cheap copies on the market.
For further reading about Sussex Trugs & trug makers this recent (16th September 2015) article in COUNTRY LIFE magazine is worth a read – “The Great Trug Revival” by Tessa Waugh. Digital editions are available via the Country Living website.
The First Gold hop variety which Ashley chose in the 
I so love young hops, these new First Gold hop setts for planting now have kicked off that full of promise ‘spring is here’ feeling!
