A few weeks ago, JK and I snatched the opportunity to blast down the M5 to Newland, near Malvern to pay a visit to the good folk at Charles Faram, the Hop Factor and Merchant. Chances are, if you’ve ever drunk British ale, the hops in that beer will have come through this small cluster of farm buildings in the Worcesteshire countryside.
Faram’s bring in hops from all over the world – The Yakima Valley in the US, from Nelson in New Zealand, Australia, Slovenia, Poland, and of course from Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Kent.
It’s a non-stop operation of storing, sorting, evaluating, packaging, and distribution. The place has a real busy atmosphere, and of course the aromas wafting around from the myriad varieties in the warehouse are simply stunning.
We were given the guided tour by hop expert and sales manager Will Rogers, who showed us the cold room where the hops arrive in the traditional hop-pockets and bales, then onto the packing machines where the bales are split and repacked into the 5kg foil vacuum bags.
The highlight of the trip for us though, was in the “tasting” room where we were treated to an enormous array of hop flowers. We were able to rub, sniff, evaluate, make notes and let our imaginations run away as we hatched ideas for new beers.
Some of the hops were new to us, and where really, really good, others were old favourites and it was great to see how the latest harvest had turned out. We took copious notes to aid our assessment, some of the descriptors we had were; fresh, zesty, spicy, pungent, floral, tobacco, grassy, garlic, gravy(!), linseed, cat-wee, peanuts, melon, orange.
We also got to meet one of the growers, who had supplied us last year with 5kg of a new experimental variety designated “Archer”. We did a special one-off brew for him and it was great to get some feedback and discuss how the hop had performed, and how it was progressing toward commercial planting.
We sniffed some new varieties that had only been grown in one-row in a hop garden, yielding just 5 kilos, and yet others of which only a single plant existed. These had mysterious temporary names like P1876… It will be fascinating to see these new, surprisingly pungent and aromatic high alpha varieties breaking onto the market in the coming years. There is a massive and troublesome shortage of the most popular hops from all over the world, and new, interesting, home-grown varieties in abundant supply would be most welcome.
The other significant outcome of our trip was the decision to brew our English Pale Ale again such was the quality and aroma of some of the English varieties that we had a chance to evaluate. We brewed the “EPA” last year as a “Celebration Of English Hops” and whilst it was a nice beer, it didn’t quite fulfil its remit of showcasing English hops and proving to the world that interesting, aromatic, juicy hops can be grown here too.
Today, we brewed it again with copious late additions of three of the finest English hops we found that day at Faram’s. It will be dry-hopped in cask before release as well, so we are hopeful of a great, All-English Beer!
Great write-up Geoff and interesting to see a post on a topic that’s less often covered. Hope i find the EPA on somewhere, are you going to tell us the hops?
hmm what happened to my comment?
I said somethign along the lines of…
Its interesting to read a post on a topic not often covered in the blogosphere and sounds liek you had a good time. The EPA sounds great, hope I get hold of some…are you going to divulge which hops you chose?
Nice update guys, any chance of adding a subscribe button/facility to make sure I don’t miss future posts? Or am I missing it
Hi Phil, There is a subscribe to newsletter button at the bottom of this page, I will endeavour to send regular updates to subscribers via that… Cheers.