Hop Harvest Gold, 5.0%abv

 

Humpty Dumpty Brewery’s autumn seasonal for 2007 is Hop Harvest Gold, a refreshing and deceptively drinkable golden ale at 5.0%abv. This is a special beer for us, as we designed and brewed this beer with the first Goldings hops of the 2007 harvest, with special thanks to hop farmer Chris Daws of Kitchenham Farm, Bodiam in East Sussex and his family.

All of the partners visited the farm on Saturday, September 8th.  Chris took us for a visit to the hop garden, where we saw his Goldings, Admirals and a few other varieties of tall and hedgerow hops.  This was the first day of the 2007 picking, and the farm was a hive of activity.

 

Here Chris is telling us about some of his experimental plantings.   These hops were planted late in the 2007 season and are not aiming for a crop yield this year.

   

The young farmers motor through the hop garden, cutting the twine that supports the bines as they grow up more than 4 metres up poles and trellising.  The bines drop onto a specially fit trailer that catches them and keeps them from becoming tangled.

   

Chris and his family run the harvesting equipment, which plucks the hop flowers from the bines. It takes about five people to run this machine, feeding in the bines, bagging up the hops and dealing with the leftover bits. It’s quite a remarkable machine that efficiently separates the flowers from the stems and leaves, although a few careful eyes work the back of the line to catch the few leaves that get through the machine.

   

From the machine the hops are bagged and rushed to the oast at Iden Green Farm near Goudhurst in Kent.  Hops have to be dried quickly or they begin to deteriorate.  The hops picked on Saturday afternoon were dried overnight at the oast.

Next morning at the oast, we picked up our consignment of 2007 Goldings hops straight from the drying bins.

 

Here is Bale No. 01 of the 2007 Goldings harvest, ready to hit the road on Sunday afternoon.

 

Back at the brewery on Tuesday morning, Craig and Maggie measure out the first hops of the new season.

 

Craig lowers the hop bag into the kettle for the first round of aroma hopping.  This beer has two late hop additions to leave a more pronounced hop flavour and aroma than most beers.

From field to kettle in less than 72 hours, these hops could hardly be fresher.  They’re at the heart of Hop Harvest Gold, for a limited time only from Humpty Dumpty Brewery.