On the first day of September, Bitter End Brewery owner Mike and Brewer Steve, paid a visit to Pridewood Farm in Ashperton, Herefordshire at the invitation of hop merchants Charles Farhams. Farhams, based just the other side of the Malvern Hills were eager to show off the new state of the art hop kilns that have been installed at Pridewood after the old brick and timber kilns were badly damaged by fire during the 2007 season...The new kilns incorporate a greater degree of automation, reducing some of the manual work that was associated with the old kilns. The drying process itself too is computer controlled thus ensuring a better quality of end product although Pridewood's farmer Martin Powell-Tuck is still up to the early hours to keep a watchful eye over his hops -on this day, the first day of the 2009 harvest, it was Goldings that was being brought in.
It is a wonderful sight to see the bines being cut out in the field, brought by trailer to the picking shed where the hops are stripped from the bine ready to be conveyed to the kiln where they're spread over the large floors and dried such that moisture is reduced by as much as 90%.
Drying the hops increases their storage capacity, vaccum packed so that the characteristcs which make Humulus Lupulus prized to such a degree by brewers are preserved, so that they may be used the whole year round. Drying however is not nesescary for the hops to be used in a brew and we were able to obtain a quantity immediately after picking and before kilning -5kilos of the first Goldings of 2009. The hops were brought back to Cumbria and pitched to a very special brew within 24 hours of picking...keep your eye out in the Bitter End this week for G.H.B. (Green-hopped Beer) at 4% ABV -A very special beer available for a limited period of each year only.
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