Onwards to Cascade and Farnham White Bine in Hop Harvest 2021

Welcome to the third of our special Hop Harvest galleries – a little delayed because we had the small matter of the Hop Harvest Festival & TEA Parties to get ready for!

Week 3 and Matthew set the challenge to get all the Fuggles safely in before the party weekend. 31 rows to cut in 5 days!

So it was all hands to the pump. Head Brewer, Miles, is used to early morning starts, but volunteered for the night shift so precious time was not lost. Here he is laying out the dried hops for conditioning on Thursday night.

Meanwhile, Mark and Matthew vacuum packed the conditioned hops all day Friday……

….before all the bales are squirreled safely away in their home on site. We have commissioned the old cellar which is a perfect temperature. The total Fuggles harvest will be used for 200 brews of TEA, up from 60 from the 2020 harvest.

Then it was a quick turn around Friday evening to transform the Hangar ready for the parties.

The Hop Harvest festivities went with a swing and our visitors got creative decorating their hats with hops.

On Sunday, our friend Sovereign made a welcome return with his fellow Suffolk Punch, Bowler. This time, giving our visitors the chance to see the hop garden in style from the back of their dray.

But come Monday morning, it was time to make a start on the Farnham White Bine hops. Fortunately, we had some help from our friends at Brewhouse and Kitchen pub group, who came by to see it was all done.

Luckily Matthew was happy with the quality of our heritage hop, which is back in its spiritual home in and around Farnham……….

……..so happy in fact that he let some of his precious hops go all the way to Chelsea, to help decorate the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show site.

The Cascade crop is absolutely ripe for harvesting, so it’s full steam ahead to get it in this week, before the last of the Farnham White Bine is brought in.

There’s another two weeks of harvesting left, so if you fancy a stint in the hop garden, just let us know!