Maddie 0:07
Welcome back to the final Spreading Hopppiness episode of 2024 this week, we’re bringing growers and brewers together to talk about their relationships and how they’ve changed over the years. Will Rogers, Charles Farams Group Technical Director, sits down with the team from Wye Valley Ant from Ledbury Real Ales and members of our Charles Faram farms, now over to will.

Will Rogers 0:28
So I’m Will Rogers Group Technical Director at Charles Faram, and I’m absolutely delighted to welcome you to our podcast and with me, we’ve got our illustrious hop grower here. Would you like to introduce yourself? Tom, I’m Tom Probert. We farm hops just up the road, and we recently joined the Charles Farams Farms family.

Fantastic. Thanks. Tom. And I’m also joined by Vernon and Gareth. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Gareth Bateman 1:00
Yeah, I’m Gareth, head brewer at Wye Valley brewery for coming to 11 years now. So it’s quite nice to be here brewing in hop growing territory.

Vernon Amor 1:11
And my name is Vernon, Managing Director of Wye Valley brewery.

Simon Parker 1:15
I’m Simon Parker, a hop grow from Bishop’s Froom in Herefordshire

Ant Stevens 1:18
Morning Will I’m Anthony Stevens, co owner of Ledbury Real Ales Brewery, in Ledbury.

Will Rogers 1:24
And we’re going to talk a little bit about grower relationships, Brewer grower relationships today, and why that’s important to you, and some of the stories behind those,

Ant Stevens 1:36
Yeah, perfect. So it’s one of the reasons why we brew, yeah, that relationship that we have. And we are lucky, as you know, we’re based in the middle of, you know, hop growing territory in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. And I’m surrounded by 2627, amazing hop growers who I have the pleasure of knowing the majority of them,

Will Rogers 1:55
Yeah, to you, the hop isn’t purely an ingredient. There’s something more to it. There’s a story behind each decision that you’ve made in the brewery to use that hop.

Ant Stevens 2:06
I think it is every everything we do with our hops here, is a journey. It’s a story and it’s not just a story for me, it’s a story for the Publican and the consumer. So we like to make sure that our beers tell that story, and I think this has become part of what we do, because when we first started brewing, it was a hop and then very quickly we realised where we were and how lucky we were to have access to some amazing farmers and yourselves at Farams, who helped me through that, through that journey. And you’ve been brilliant with us, right from the start. You pop in and see some at a moment’s notice, probably not even a moment’s notice, so that you just turn up on the daily, yeah, pretty much. I think I used to give him five minutes notice and then just started to turn up. If I turn up to the vending machine, I might just pop down the road and see when the sand is around for a cup of tea. I’m very lucky with all the local farmers, really, because I can’t give them notice and drop in. But they know me, and they know also that I’m, you know, I can probably Potter about on my own, to an extent as well.

They are very good at spending time with me, and I do promote, I like to promote the farmers on the beers as well. So a lot of our a lot of the brews that we do, certainly through the hop development, and the green hop promotes the farmer and the hop rather than, rather than the brewery. So I think because of that relationship we have, because we’re co promoting each other, I do get the opportunity to drop in. So whether it’s Simon or the Powel-Tuck’s round the corner in Ashburton or Jimmy Barrett or Tom Probert, Weston Beggard, I can drop in. And I know that the farmers love seeing the Brewers, probably not just at five minutes notice, when they’re, you know, just getting out of bed, but probably want some more notice. But I know that the you at Farams are very happy for brewers, and actually encourage brewers to come on to farm

Will Rogers 4:03
Absolutely so, brewers do want to get in touch and come and look around the farm, we’ll encourage some notice, but we can help facilitate that.

Vernon Amor 4:15
The importance of knowing where our hops come from, and that grower and Brewer relationship. It’s one of the most important things in terms of the story that we can tell about our beer. Time and time again, our customers love to know that not only do we say our beers are made with Herefordshire hops, I mean, all of our beers at Wye Valley brewery have some Herefordshire hops in so but our customers love to hear that story as well. So in from a business point of view, it’s great for marketing, you know, it’s genuine as well. But on a personal level, it’s just great. It’s great fun to get to know to Tom and all of the other growers in and around the county.

Will Rogers 4:59
Who was it that was the original catalyst for you getting involved in so close? Because I know you’re very close to a lot of the growers, which, which one was it that really sparked that for you?

Ant Stevens 5:10
So they’re all They’re all very different, aren’t they? I mean, you know them as you know you know them better than I do, but I think the first time the spark came was spending some time with Simon Parker up at Instone court. Now, Simon is just the most amazing human. So maybe it’s a I was a customer, right? But I’m a very small customer, so I don’t think Simon ever just saw me as, you know, as a customer. He saw me as somebody that actually was interested in the process, and he spent hours, if not days. If you add up the time he spent with me, you turn up on his farm unannounced, and he’ll spend three hours walking around the hop yard with you, driving you from the different yards he’s got and his yards are quite spread out as well. He went through the whole process with me from start to finish. And because I could go and see him at different times of the season, I’d also get to see process in different stages, and the impacts what he was having, the things that were impacting him, the highs and lows that hop growers go through.

Gareth Bateman 6:10
Well, for me, having worked in breweries around the country, in different places, all I used to see from hops with these samples turning up once a year, and it might even be just there’s a pile of pellets there to, you know, rub and sniff. But then moving here, realising that the closest grower to us in the brewery is, like, less than two miles away, and it’s fantastic. You get to know the people. Meet the people, see them through the year, how the harvest going?

Will Rogers 6:36
So, when did you first meet Anthony Simon?

Simon Parker 6:41
I can’t remember. I’m not sure it was one of your open days.

Ant Stevens 6:45
I think so I was an interloper. We’ve moved into the county from London, what, 15 years ago, and we set the brewery up pretty quickly after that. And then I think we met, and then I’ve been stalking you ever since.

Simon Parker 7:00
Yes, I get to see him two or three times in the hop picking season. It’s never a simple pick up some green hops for a green hop beer. It’s always like a two hour round trip. Let’s go and have a look at everything and see what’s best today and pay for it.

Will Rogers 7:17
But it’s always good to be able to have that opportunity to show brewers what really is happening, you know, under the bonnet of hop growing, because I think there’s an impression that hop growing is easy, but when you’re growing it on the scale that you are, it’s quite a challenge, isn’t it?

Simon Parker 7:36
Well, yes, I don’t help myself, because one of my staff happened to mention the other day, I don’t have one hop yard. I’ve got one hop yard that has all one variety. All my other hop yards have two or three varieties in which makes the agronomics interesting. Also makes picking even more doubly interesting, because you’re running around chasing the variety that’s ripe by the time. But because I have at least 12 different varieties, there’s always something riping at a different time, and it’s always interesting to show. And luckily, I’ve got some trial varieties as well, so you have the row of different plants, and it’s just wonderful to go through and rub a sniff and think, Oh, what’s that gonna be like this year.

And you’re just not just looking at aromas, you’re looking at growth. There’s growth patterns as well.

Will Rogers 8:29
And Vernon, I mean, you grew up in this area, so you’re you’re very familiar. In fact, I think the man you’re sitting next to, you’ve known for…

Tom Probert 8:37
Use the term very slightly

Will Rogers 8:39
disproportionate amount of time.

Vernon Amor 8:41
Yeah. So actually, for those of you that don’t know, Tom and I went to school together, and I didn’t know who’d have known that all these years later, you got into growing hops. And I’d have been brewing beer and using your when you met the people and you and they understand a bit about you, and vice versa.

Ant Stevens 9:01
It seems like this crop is just very special to people who are involved in it, way more so than anything else that they could grow.

Will Rogers 9:09
Yeah, they say it takes a lifetime to learn how to grow a hop.

Ant Stevens 9:14
I think that just helps as well understand what Simon and his other hop growers have gone through to get that product to the table, and if it’s slightly brown, you understand why. And actually I know why Simon picks when he does, because he picks when he’s ripe and ready. That means sometimes it might not look perfectly bright and green, but actually I know that he’s picked it at exactly the right time, so I’ve got the most out of that hop. So if you sell that to somebody else that just sees a hop as a product, they might open that bag and go, well, it’s not as bright green as I want it to be, but I know it says it’s perfectly ripe

Simon Parker 9:54
Last season, which was basically a cold, wet, damp season, it didn’t really have any sunshine except for that. Amazingly hot spelling in September, September, generally, to get alpha or a aroma into hops, you need that sunshine. And there was only two varieties of all the varieties I picked last year. There was only two varieties that, really, I would say stunt the place out that was really strong when we were drying them or in working in the hot kilns.

Will Rogers 10:25
That Reek

Simon Parker 10:26
Yeah, that obviously is a reek that’s always a bad, negative term in hoping growing, the lovely aroma that really filled the kilns, and that was the Admiral, which we did pick late because they were young plants and they were turning brown. And it wasn’t powedery, it was just rippness. It was right at the end of September. But I wanted to pick them late, because I want that energy to go back in the plant for next year, and that was really strong. It’s Wow, this is fantastic, but they didn’t look great. So it’s a fine balance between what you want and the other one was actually earnest. Ironically, it just seemed to give off this aroma. It was a changes from year to year. Last year was melon. I still stuck in my mind he walked in the kilns and Oh, melons. But it was very powerful. Everything else we picked. There was something there, yes, but not overpowering like it was with those two, which is really strange.

Vernon Amor 11:22
It’s absolutely true, but for us, brewers, within reason, we don’t care too much, do we? Gareth, if the hops, they look a bit brown and wind damage, and they’re not, they don’t, they don’t look perfect. But generally, we find the older the hop been picked late, the rub is so good, but I know that you’ll be looking and going, Oh my God, that’s never going to win gold medal at trumpet plowing. Boy, it’s difficult. I know, yeah.

Tom Probert 11:45
We’ve got a window to pick in, yeah, and that optimum timing could be a matter of days, and you might have a week or more to pick that variety. And then you’ve got to consider the next variety.

Ant Stevens 11:56
Last season, James Hawkins, who’s got his farm down in Darlington. We went to see him picking the first gold that we use in our Ledbury Gold. And we’ve used James’s First Gold for number of years now. It’s 35 degrees. First gold. When you pick it into that temperature, just can’t do anything other than shatter, the cone stays open. So as soon as you put it through the machines, it just breaks up. So when you open your bag, if you don’t know what’s happened with that season, you look at it and go, Well, it’s just petals, but it can’t be anything else, because the template you have to pick on the day, because it’s perfectly ripe and you want to be able to get the right aromas. But that day just was such a difficult day to work in. If he’d left it a day, but then everything else, the knock on, impact onto everything else. Yield was good, but the product itself was just didn’t package very well. Most brewers, or a lot of brewers, would look at that and go, terrible, hop look what it’s done. It’s not, flavours still in there, it’s all it’s all in the bag, but it just doesn’t look great. Now you wouldn’t know that unless you were there on that day, or actually, unless the Faram’s team that you know involved in that can explain that that reason why the hop looks like it does.

Will Rogers 13:12
It’s an organic product at the end of the day, and every picking window is different, so squeezing that the hops into the right picking window is a real challenge, especially when you consider that equipment that investment is only used for one month of the year. But it is also fascinating crop to grow. So you know they do say, once bitten by the hop, it’s forever in your blood.When did you first know that hop growing is what you were going to do for as your career Simon?

Simon Parker 13:50
oh, I wish, I wish I could tell you that it would, it would be before 13. I know that much, I changed schools at 13, and before then, I knew I was gonna be hop grower. It was always that first morning hop picking and the smell drifting through the house because we’re picking them on the machine not far from it, and it’s just coming in. Oh, it is the smell amazing, actually. So because of the wilt situation, we hadn’t grown Fuggles for quite a long time, but I had a opportunity to pick Fuggles For the first time through my machine. This would be about 10 years ago, anyway, because it was the first one we picked for the season. We went out to the I went out to the hop yard to get everybody first day of picking everyone sorted. By time I got back, they’d always start picking them. And I walked, you know, down that slope to our hop picking machine from the kilns. I walked down there and went, Oh, wow. This is why I’m still a hop grower because the Fuggle is, unbelievable, that unique aroma he gives. I don’t know why, but on that first morning I pick I walked down, I had stopped and went, Oh, wow, I haven’t smelt that in years. It’s just amazing.

Ant Stevens 15:12
I take it for granted when I come and see you because it’s so easy. Everything runs so smoothly.

Simon Parker 15:20
It’s a bit like a duck treading underwater, I can assure you it isn’t. I am very lucky. I’ve got some very good stuff. One is very mechanically minded, and my childhood was spending time spent well. I spent my absolute younger set on the tractor, and then I promoted myself to the kilns, but I was always running around the hop picking machine.

We were dealing with something that wasn’t the problem is you use it, what, three or four weeks of the year, and it sits there. Three days before hop picking, we better go and start fixing it, and not being mechanically minded, per se myself,it was always a bit of a bodge, job and breakdowns it was always a headache, whereas now I have a good team, and it’s so much easier, and we can pick a lot more hops in a day now, because he’s just nice to keep the machine running for longer

Will Rogers 16:16
You’ve just, you know, your machine is 4050, years old. I call I call it 1950s technology, but yes, built in the 60s, designed in the 50s and built in the 60s. But actually, this last season, you installed a secondary cleaning line, didn’t you?

Simon Parker 16:37
We did. And that actually goes down to my lad who runs my machine because he got everything running so sweetly. On the picking front, the

problem is we were picking too many and I couldn’t clean them. I couldn’t get the quality. I couldn’t get the leaf out, even though they call it a superee, which has the capacity. I just couldn’t get them

to standard. Too much volume coming through, too much volume coming through. And you either have,

they’d rather take too much rubbish out or too much good hop out.

Ant Stevens 17:07
Sorry, not enough rubbish or too much good hop out. And you think, I’ve got to do something about this. So we actually, as soon as they’re picked, we split at source and put the second cleaner in. And that has made a world, I’d like to say that made the world the difference in our quality this year, I must say, I’m sure you’d agree that the quality this year was, well, not the quality, but the cleanliness. So the leaf and stem that you managed to pull out this year was noticeably different, not that it’s ever been the problem a top farmer is not just a hot farmer, and they’re mechanics. They are refabricating parts for a 1950s machine that you can’t buy anymore. So when the machine breaks, and we went to see Richie Phillips this season, right the very beginning of the season, he was picking his Pilgrim, first day of his pilgrim. And we went to get some green hot, some hot for our green hot brew. And we turned up at 10 o’clock, assuming that he would have done three hours of picking at that point. And I think they’d done five kilos because the machine had broken, and the wire they’d come off the buying truck. The buyer broke, yeah, and

he’s lying on top of them, machine up in the air, trying to fix the buying track covered in grease and Buck and this is, this is your hop farmer who’s now turned mechanic, trying to fix a piece of machinery which which is part of the process. It was interesting talking to Alan prel, who’s works for Sarah through the picking season. He manages, maintains the machine. He’s an amazing man when it comes to anything mechanical you can fix and make anything seeing him after the new machine had gone in, I thought he’d be thinking, well, I don’t have a job anymore, and now he gets to tinker and move, move things around on the machine. And still, still massively important, but now not having to go off and make replacement parts in his workshop. Now he’s managing a much more modern machine. Yeah, it’s not simply a case of putting hops through a hot picking machine, variety by variety and and day by day that you mentioned, the 35 degrees C day with with James and his first gold growers will make adjustments for that within the machine to try and maintain the cone integrity. That’s interesting. But with the kit, I should say, with an equipment we’ve got, which we’ve got, low and slow is what suits us. I think if we upgraded, then, yes, we’d go down the German route of fast and quick.

Will Rogers 19:35
You know, from an energy perspective, the German method uses less energy. But because we grow seeded hops, our streak is thicker, cause a thicker and therefore, in order to make sure the hops are dried, effectively, we need to dry it over a longer period of time and slower priors

Ant Stevens 19:59
at some of the farm.

Don’t share equipment because you think that the investment across farms would make, would make sense a bit more like the German model.

Unknown Speaker 20:07
Yeah, the reason for not sharing equipment is actually to do with hygiene, because of the birth ceiling wealth in particular, you wouldn’t want to take a tractor and trailer from one farm to another and risk moving the disease around with you. So we we tend to keep things separate. So there’s limitations of the investments that you can make. So that means each individual hot farm has got to look at that business and decide, you know, when do they want to invest, and the fact that they’ve not invested from the 1950s and 60s machines that they’re all running, predominantly running is probably a testament to the quality of those machines from the 1950s and 60s that they were built so well, and they’ve done a perfect job. And they were shifted around the world. You know, they were sold everywhere around the world. And I know there’s some still some kiwi growers who’ve still got machines that were sent over from the UK. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So you don’t really need to upgrade other than to reduce certain to make it more efficient. The technology hasn’t really changed. The principles of hot picking are the same, but the new equipment has improved efficiency wise, and certainly does a better job of cleaning. I would say he’s a member of the CharlesFaram farms grower Group. We’re a very close family, actually, aren’t we? We are.

Simon Parker 21:31
It was a nice comment made the other night, but when the new entrants just come on board and he says, Oh, wow, this is just wonderful. Never had this before, where we are just socializing as much as trying to learn off each other. Yeah, exactly. There was a lot of

Ant Stevens 21:48
there’s a lot of assistance to other growers and transfer of knowledge and and support, because hot growing can be quite a lonely thing. When you’re on your own spraying a field, looking after them, but it’s good to know that brewers are supporting you in the background as well, isn’t it, we came to, I mean, we’re lucky where we’re located, but we came to one of your grower walks during the picking season last year, and so to listen to four hours of knowledge being shared openly between what you might look at as competitors in any other business, but anyone that grows hops in Herefordshire helps everybody grow the best tops that they can, and they work together. So listening to four hours of spraying techniques and nozzle sizes and the excitement of people who’ve done it, and then can share that, because it helps the whole market. It helps every other. It’s pretty impressive to be able to watch and see that. And brewing is very similar in in the way that I see most brewers, you know, they compete on the bar. They’re still happy to help each other out. It’s quite a unique industry. When people find out I’m a hot grower, immediately, their next question is, what brewers Do you supply. And now it’s quite nice. So I can, I can always say, we supply into buddy back But historically, I’ve got no idea. They go to a merchant, they get blended, they go somewhere. But now with fair, and I feel there’s a bit more connection, and I can hopefully going on tell people a bit more of a back story. Oh, well, they go here. They go there. And people really want to know,

Will Rogers 23:24
so how long have your family been at in stone courts on Oh. Grandfather bought the farm in 1919.

Simon Parker 23:37
Two Brothers were farming together next to Rosemont,

the old experimental farmer outside here.

And anyway, the one brother, they sold the field to Rosemont, and that was used as down payment by instead, okay, it was a big sale.

They split up rather a large estate out of mandefield.

And grandfather bought

in stone court, and we’ve been there ever since

Ant Stevens 24:09
Simon asked me to go to the farm one day and just help out. It’s a Saturday morning. So I said, Yeah, no problem. I’ll come on Saturday. Saturdays are normally half days in hot picking land, not for Simon. It’s another full day. And I turned up and he says, tractor. You’re going to drive a tractor from here to, you know,

yeah, down to the Talbot, and which is a sort of 45 minute journey. I’ve never driven a tractor before. My instructions of driving the tractor was sticking in fifth. Put your foot down and don’t stop. I didn’t know where I was going. I got I got there. I followed Simon’s father in law to the to the yard, picked up my first load. Didn’t even know how to adjust, put the other trailer on, figured it out, got halfway home and just started to cry. I was like, this is one of the worst days of my life. Favored my wife up and said, I’m.

You know, what am I doing anyway? Five or six runs later, I’m thinking, this is actually quite good fun. And then being part of that picking process, very few people get to be, you know, to be part of that. So I felt honored in the end, but I didn’t, but in but I wish I had more tractor training before I’d been sent on the on the long journey it, you’ll find a lot of growers assume that, because you’re from the area, you know how to drive a tractor, because they were brought up driving tractors and front end loaders, and yeah, for me, this was the first So, but, but, you know, it’s fun, right? It taught me. It taught me something else. It was another part of the process that I could be part of do. Part of. Decided I don’t want to do it again. I’ve made very clear to Simon Parker that’s I’m not going to do tractor driving. I don’t mind doing other things on the farm, but I’m not. I’m not going to get involved in tractor driving too stressful. Former but then all the other farmers have been providing different they’re all equally as generous with their time as Simon is heart picking is always a collective

Simon Parker 26:05
a collection of funny stories. You know, we’ve had track drivers turn up, and they actually lived in succulent suckling we’re pulling. He lives in Sutley. His mother brings him to on the first day,

and he jumps on the tractor, and then about three hours later, he comes around the first load. It’s like, well,

where have you been? Oh, well, I got lost. The next morning he arrives, he arrives by himself in his car, and again, it’s 10 o’clock before he turns up with the first load. Where have you been? Oh, I got lost again. So you must come to work the right time, right place. When he gets on a tractor, it’s completely different ball game. And there’s another mutual friend, he said, I put him on a tractor because problem is, because we got some hop yards far away, we just need some relief drivers for a couple of days while we pick it. So it’s not enough work to warrant permanent member stuff. That’s why Anthony way kindly came and helped, and I put somebody else on that and he says, I’m still on the tractor, bearing in mind they’re not mind, they’re not very big tractors. And he thinks he’s filling the road. He thinks he’s like, driving a great, huge, Arctic lorries. Oh, my God, after you’ve done about three, four trips, he says, Oh, I can get through any gap in that.

You know is that? Is that confidence, which was what you got as a day went on, your confidence gets better because you realize your ability.

Ant Stevens 27:22
You can’t say anything behind you. And I was worried about people wanting to come past me, so I kept pulling in and letting people past. I’ve realized I’m in a tractor. I don’t need to do that.

They can wait

Will Rogers 27:34
on the way past.

Ant Stevens 27:37
You don’t have to antagonize the locals when you’re trapped. It’s a good way to be able to see bit of everything, because just you don’t know how they I mean, you know how hard these guys work, and the seasons are long, and they’re not just growing hops. They’ve grown other crops and looking after sheep and cattle and everything else that goes with it. So when you see that the effort that needs to go in, just

being able to be on farm and be able to see some of that, and be able to go through the day and the growing season just adds so much more value to what I do in the brewery. And I know Johnny’s found the same thing when he’s now been introduced to hop farms. You get a much more you get a very different opinion of the hopping you’re brewing with, and that then does go through the whole product. So being able to see that and be part of the process, even I’m not sure how much help I actually was, it certainly helps me, and it helps the brand, and it helps Simon and we, you know, we want to promote Simon and his farm like we do with all of the growers. So I think it just adds to the as to the enjoyment of the pint.

Simon Parker 28:40
Obviously, hops has changed a lot, and hops are still there. The one hop yard I can see on the map was growing hops in 1875 on the one map, and it’s still hop guard now, amazing. Yeah. What’s the soil like in that hop yard?

It needs recovering. Unfortunately, it’s very close to bedrock. We can’t subsoil it without hitting bedrock.

Unfortunately, there’s only one field on the whole farm that we can plow at seven inches and not hit bedrock.

One of the disadvantages or advantages are living on the side of room Valley,

so it’s a it’s a red soil quite the broad yard series, they call it. It’s got a quite iron content, hence the redness and the spring water that we live off. You get that metallic taste because it’s got the heavy iron content.

But it’s East facing Valley catches early morning sunrise to risk any frosts.

And

being a heavier clear soil, we can take a droid. We don’t particularly like this wet weather we’ve been having this season. Does that make a big difference for you? Because,

Ant Stevens 29:56
correct me, the tap root goes quite straight down, and that’s yeah.

Route, and then all of a lot of the other routes from across the surface. Yes. So binge shallow, then hitting bedrock. Or is that tap root? Obviously doesn’t go down very far. Does that make difference to your Well, we are lucky in the sense of bedrock is sandstone

Simon Parker 30:16
porous anywhere else? Yes, so the roots can get down. I mean, it’s quite easy. If you dug down, you hit the stone and yeah, it’s quite easy to break that stone up,

go down into more down to the valley floor, yet what they call a corn stone, which is horrible, whereas the sands lovely and layered and flat,

but breaks up easily, where this cornerstone is round and knobbly and really hard and all

Will Rogers 30:39
I haven’t that’s my geology enough to there’s probably some sort of igneous rock I would imagine being exposed to heat, I think, very likely,

Simon Parker 30:51
but I don’t know. No, I’ve just been caught out again. Well, the season’s different, yeah, yeah, new challenges, different ways. It’s a very technical crop to grow,

Will Rogers 31:03
and requires a lot of knowledge and experience. I know Tom over the years. You know, there must be times when you’ve been scratching your head in the heart, thinking, why am I doing this? You know, it’s difficult to grow, and you know all of that. And you know we have our moments as well in the brewery, but when we realize that, you know, we rely on each other, you know, for to get you know, taught me what I’ve done. I think making that human connection is really, really important, yeah. And Tom as a as a new member of Charles fair and farms, I think one of the comments you made to me after one of our meetings is the transparency of that group, yeah, so, so now you actually have visibility of where your hops go, and how much does that mean to you? Because it’s quite a solitary job. Yeah, I think, isn’t it? Perhaps not so important of where mine go, but it’s the kind of you feel bit more of a team now, because you can see that you’re all in it together. You don’t feel quite so secluded in what we’re doing. So I guess that’s probably one of the reasons which fascinated you so much about going over to see Simon was the breadth of the varieties that he he’s growing, and the attention to detail. Yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t know anything about hops when we first started out, so I knew they would grow locally.

Ant Stevens 32:15
And then met Simon and some of the other growers. But Simon spent so much time with me going around the yard, talking to me about all the things that’s involved in the process, all the nightmares that the growers can have around disease and aphids and everything else coming through the site and and for me, it was, it was the biggest product I was putting In to the beer. You know, there’s

other ingredients, obviously not by volume, but by influence, exactly by influence. And so for me, it was about

taking a bit of, you know, bishops from and the hops, and getting it into the beer, and making sure then that the land was understood to be able to explain to the customers that there was a whole cycle here. And it’s not just an ingredients. It’s way more than just an ingredient. And Simon started to give me that knowledge that I just found fascinating.

Vernon Amor 33:11
Yeah, we because, again, we want to get that message across. Again, not in, you know, it’s not entirely selfless. It is great for it’s good for business. If someone’s in a pub, and they can choose between an array of different beers. If they know that that beer or that I know why Valley brewery, they always use their Herefordshire hearts for on their website, they can pinpoint the growers. They have personal relationships with them that will swing people a consumer’s choice on will they choose this beer or this beer? I make my selections on buying goods and produce based around a lot of those that knowledge that it’s been locally produced, locally sourced, and I prepared to pay a premium for it. So it’s good, yeah, it’s good. It’s good for business. That’s one of the most popular visited sections on our website, the where the hops come from, you know, because we know you’re a hot grower, where boys, we’re from Herefordshire. You can almost take it for granted. This is so exotic people that come from the Northeast or Scotland or Northern Ireland that you know this, it’s fun. They love the fact that it’s on our doorstep. But also, you know, from that point on,

Will Rogers 34:24
every every batch of hops, whether it be fresh pack or type 90, traceable, all the way back to farm. So from that moment, you have have a link all the way back to farm and the story, because I know you’re very keen on this, and you you like to tell the story about where the raw ingredients come from

Ant Stevens 34:43
in with your beers, you know they do. I think it’s one of the most important things to do in in all products, to be honest, that I like to know where my sausages come from and where the pork comes from in the pork chop on a weekend and the beef and.

We’re lucky. I can trace all of those things back to the individual farmers, because we buy from farm.

I don’t see why beer would be any different when one of the main UK grown ingredients is the hops. I don’t know why any Brewer wouldn’t want to understand where the hops came from, not just whether they come from Kent or Herefordshire, but whether they come from Simon’s farm. And actually, why not understand which bit of Simon’s farm they come from? And you know what the tower of that piece of land is, and why it’s different. Because Ernest that Simon grows is different to an earnest that Martin grows, the admiral that you grow, be different to the animal that’s growing in Kent, the jester that’s grown, you know, through to the hob development program, is going to be different from the different farms, not maybe not noticeable, but it is when you get into the real, the real nitty, grittier. So for me, it’s really important to make sure that that lineage is is understood by the end consumer. When I’ve had Gareth come out for greed picking a green hop, he doesn’t say, I want to green up with this bit, this variety.

Simon Parker 36:05
It’s very much a case of, he’s come out first thing in the morning and and we’ve driven round. I said, right, this is this and this. And we’ve snip, rubbed and sniffed, and he’s, he’s changes it, because he says, right, I’m ready to do a brew tomorrow. We’ll have this one.

What’s ripe, what’s good? Yeah,

you know, I could automatically tell you, come and do a early Golding on the sixth of September, or come and come and do a jester at the end of September.

Ant Stevens 36:36
I don’t know how you cope there sometimes, because you’ve got four or five brewers coming for green hops. So I’m in the same day, and you’ll say to me, Anthony, I think the Opus is now, right. And so you’ll stop picking everything else. You’ll pop down to the Opus, you’ll grab 20 plants, you’ll run it through the machine, bag it up just for us. And I’ve got it wrong. I’ve had to run back down to that field to get three more binds

Simon Parker 37:01
just so

Ant Stevens 37:04
it’s not just a case of this is you are very you will also make sure that you are picking just for us and that you and that’s for anyone that that knows how this process works. That’s a huge amount of time in a very short picking window for you to go to that effort to do that just for the Brewers, especially when you got staff sitting around waiting, yes, that’s expensive. Yeah.

Vernon Amor 37:28
Again, 15 or 20 years ago, consumers, you know, people in a pub, didn’t care a task really, about where their hops came from. But since the growth and explosion of craft beer, where it’s all been about pops, really,

that has transcended, that’s cascaded out into people being interested in British varieties. And so when we tell consumers, this is Herefordshire hops, these coke cane Goldings, Fuggles, scrambling cross, they’re actually interested in now, and it’s, you know, it’s, whereas there was zero knowledge about that before. Now, there is some. So that’s why it is very important to us. We need British brewers to

Will Rogers 38:17
invest in what we’re doing, don’t we say

Simon Parker 38:21
it might show but it, you know, works best ways, and that’s my if the Brewers come on farm and meet us, they’ll get a bigger picture of how much it affects us. I mean, I am probably little bit unique in that I’m passionate about growing. I’ve been saying for most of my life, if I wasn’t hot, growing on my pack in farming, nothing else. I do other stuff on the farm, obviously.

But you know, if I didn’t have hope growing up, I’d be struggling to be enthusiastic, to carry on. Nothing else sparks your passion, really, exactly. Well, that’s one way of putting it. Blinded by love would be another one. But

Ant Stevens 38:59
the the ability for me to be able to go and see, you know, Martin pal tuck around the corner, and now Jimmy Barrett, who’s going sort of in between Martin and ourselves, but he’s obviously doing some work as well. Now for the paltucks as well, on some of the fields down and towards cannon through,

you see different growers grow in different ways. So Jimmy,

Jimmy grows hops. He’s a grower. I mean, he can grow anything, not saying the others can’t, but when you want something to grow, Jimmy as you man to make it grow, right? And you can see that he spends time and effort in his fields that are different to the other farmers. So the way he approaches the processes is slightly different.

Still great hops, right from both, from both farmers, but just different ways of approaching them, and you get different results. So for us to be able to go and see Jimmy and work out, you know, how he’s treated, so he’s still growing a hop, which I know is part of the development program, which we love, course, the f2 47 which he’s kept a row of, and I know it didn’t pass.

The muster within the program, because it just wasn’t, it wasn’t different enough to the other things. It was actually agronomy that it failed. I mean, but it’s good that he’s kept the road going, but I’m afraid there won’t be additional acreage. No and then and no, not should they, because it didn’t pass the it didn’t pass the tests. But as a brewers help, we love brewing with it. And actually, we love brewing with it because it’s Jimmy that grows it, and because it’s from our most local yard, and we put it into some of our put into our Hereford hop, so we put into a couple of other beers. And it’s an amazing hop to brew with. It’s got loads of fruity flavors, but as a terrible hop for grower to grow, it just doesn’t make sense for it to go through the process. But for us to be able to still get access to that, and for Jimmy still to grow it for us, you know, Abe, it’s amazing that he would do that, and then, because there’s time and effort involved with him picking that separately and drying it, and for you to then package it for us, but it gives us that little edge that we can then, as we’re talking to our customers, you know, to the publicans and people, You know, the important people that buy our beer that story because we’re local, they probably know Jimmy, or if they don’t know they know the field, they know the village. So there’s a, there’s a direct link between all of that process, which is really important for for us, and I think, and for the for the story of the hops. I think

Simon Parker 41:21
the beauty of our relationship that we have Anthony and I

comes about, one, with Auntie’s enthusiasm with honks. And two, if just for me, it was, like the first time I really got close to a brewer,

and I’m learning more about his brewing logic as well.

Historically, there’s always been this disassociation between the grower and the end user.

In the you know, pre 87 you had the hot merchant, you had the hot factor. You had the hot Marketing Board.

That’s three steps away. We never got to meet brewers. You know,

at best, you knew our Brewer might use your hops, but it was remote charts. And I think that’s the beauty of now, that in post 87

when the hops marketing board went we now get to a stage where, with our producer groups, with the direct selling, that’s potential and coming through you at farms, and you certainly have engineered this relationship with much closer to Brewer. And you get to have that, and it actually enthuses as you to work,

more importantly, to try and get the best product you can create. Because

if you begin to meet the Brewers, you know I was like you say, I supply green hops to the local brewers boy Valley and

the hot shed,

and for them to use a monthly hog down in Ross and of course, if they turn up and think the hops are not at the scratch, which comes embarrassing. So there is that emphasis that by having this close relationship, it puts a lot more,

I would say, pressure, but make sure I do a product that is worth I’m proud for to go out because it’s a it’s there being seen, if I can pretend to package away and not see it again and let some other person worry about it. So I think that’s as just as important in this between the grower and Brewer.

Will Rogers 43:26
I think beer has had a has been viewed as an industrial product,

and that has made it slightly faceless, and the ingredients go into it are viewed as being an industrial product. But the truth of the matter is that British hops are grown by at most 45 different families

Unknown Speaker 43:49
working very hard to produce those hops. Simon is always very enthusiastic, but we’ve got a whole group of growers in CharlesFaram Farms who really love to share their knowledge and experience and show the passion that they have for growing hops. And each farm is very different. I know they’re all great the same crop, but you go to your farm or Toms or Sarah Hawkins or James Hawkins or rich Phillips, they’re all very different, and they do things, they share different knowledge with you, you know. So I’d recommend that Brewer’s got to multiple farmers.

Simon Parker 44:31
Very much. Afternoons are better than mornings. Mornings always seems to be very busy for me, but afternoons, I do get a chance to if someone turns up, that’s it that, you know, that’s an hour lost just driving around, just showing a brewer

what’s ripe and what’s smelling and what’s really good. At the moment, an hour, it’s always going to be longer than that.

Gareth Bateman 44:54
We would like to know stuff. Do you actually get to see, you know, all the breweries that have taken your hearts, then we’re.

Tom Probert 45:02
Gosh, Tom asks Yes, yeah, we have that transparency. We’re quite privileged, I suppose, as hot growers, as an industry, there’s so few of us. And I can remember one instance we went to a brewery, Dad and I walked in and said, Oh, is the brewer around? Could we have a chat? And I think the flat answer normally is, no, he’s very busy, because everybody wants to meet the brewer. And they said there was anything we can help you with. We grow hops in here for just being I’ll go and go. And they were like that. And it’s just, it’s nice for the two ends of the industry to meet, yeah, and

maybe it is just nice, but I think it’s important, and I’ll always remember that it was, it was great and like stuff like this, it’s nice to feel that we’re not just winding a product out for the sake of it. You know, it’s got

a really genuine, wanted use at the end of it, not just it’s a hop. I want it. Vernon is interested in the fact that it’s from here for sure, and we built up a relationship over the years. And it’s nice to build on that and and enjoy it. I think, you know, sometimes, maybe, maybe in the past, you know, you you said you used to grow hops and off they went to the merchants every year. You didn’t really know what happened to them after that, but

Vernon Amor 46:20
certainly, you know, Gareth and I, when every year, when we’re looking at the this season’s growth, and we’re there, we’ll be rubbing and sniffing them. Obviously, quality is paramount at the end of the day, but it does make a real difference

for us in our selection process. We want our Herefordshire, Herefordshire hot so in that regard, you know, yes, it, it may not sometimes feel important to you or you know, but trust me, it’s a huge deciding factor in which varieties we know that we use.

Gareth Bateman 46:56
So, yeah, it’s great. You know, you see the list of people growing your brand new cross or cold ins. And it’s quite nice when you’re selecting the hops to you know, you can picture them their farm. Yeah, they’re doing their we did have to see people before, haven’t we, I think, yeah, during the dark times, the COVID times, we found out exactly who.

Will Rogers 47:19
And it’s been commented to me how valuable that was you going and seeing them, because hop growing is most of the time. Tom is out there on the tractor by himself, and he is taking in every little detail in that hop yard, trying to grow hops to the best of his ability,

and actually knowing that they have somewhere,

a home that is really enthusiastic about getting them and appreciates all that effort that’s gone in does,

yeah, especially in COVID, when everything went dead, and I know other growers have commented to me how, how they really appreciated that you guys turned up, and I think you gave some of them some beer as well. You turned up with beer, and so you didn’t come to me,

Tom Probert 48:06
yeah, didn’t bring the beer.

Will Rogers 48:09
Tom drank the

Gareth Bateman 48:14
beer. Few surprise faces,

Vernon Amor 48:18
mini keg of butty and yeah, but it’s, well, you know that you it was, it was the symbolism was, is that that’s the fruits of your labor? Yeah? You know, we can’t make a beer like this. Yeah, we’re, you know, we with other varieties. Or, you know what? You know, we’ve got to have these hearts when you see the effort that goes in on every farm. And I think a lot of people wouldn’t know how

Ant Stevens 48:45
old some of the practices and the machinery is and the processes, they do a brilliant job. But

it’s a, it’s a it is a proper skill, and if that skill is lost, it’s not coming back. There’s no way that I can see anybody new coming into the market, getting 345, generations of knowledge that Simon’s had and share, and that shared, it will be a very different process. There’s, there’s, there’s two things about hot, great. There are two quotes for hot, growing. One is one. One lifetime is not enough to learn how to do and the SEC the second one is all right, we’ll get it right next year.

Simon Parker 49:26
When you put it so nicely as that, we are still learning every time it you think, Oh, this is really good,

Will Rogers 49:35
which I think is a fantastic place for us to say.

Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Thank you for contributing to our podcast, and I look forward to catching up with you all very soon.

Maddie 49:54
And now we move on to our final Five Minutes with Faram of 2024

Join me, Maddie as I sit down with Alice Batham, head brewer at Batham’s Brewery, we’ll talk about her decision to join the family business and how she balances the challenges of tradition and innovation.

Alice Batham 50:10
So I’m Alice Batham. I’m the head brewer here at Batham’s Brewery in Brierley Hill, now a sixth generation brewery, so me and my sister have come up into work with my dad and my uncle. I sort of started out my career at Brewster’s in Grantham, and then worked at Thornbridge as well. But yeah, now I’m back here. Came back during the pandemic, so I’ve been in here about four years now.

Maddie 50:34
What made you want to do that change when you come back to the family business?

Alice Batham 50:38
I think a lot of it was COVID, because all of the pubs shut down, and it was just a really difficult time for my family. It was actually the first time that we’ve ever had to close the brewery. So even during the First and Second World Wars, our family stayed in, remained in and carried on brewing. And it just felt like such a hard time. My dad actually said, we need you back here. And also just for me, like I was living on my own in Sheffield, and I just, I struggled to sort of settle a little bit just because I was working, and I loved working at Thornbridge, but I think a lot of people’s priorities were kind of thrown into question during that time, and it was always going to be here, yeah,

Maddie 51:18
Was there always a plan for you to come back then?

Alice Batham 51:20
I think in your mind, when I So, when I started my masters in brewing, that was the end goal. But I never, sort of had any idea of when I would, or how I would. So I actually, I did a undergrad in English, so I never thought I would go into the business.

Maddie 51:36
I really at that point, you were like, not for me.

Alice Batham 51:38
Yeah I went to Leeds, did a English degree, and then I sort of had a big turnaround, and realised that I didn’t want to be sat doing sort of office jobs for the rest of my life. Then I realised, actually, when I went to Australia and I witnessed, like, pub culture and the beer culture there, it really made me realise what an incredible heritage we have here.

Maddie 52:02
As in out there, it wasn’t very good?

Alice Batham 52:04
Yeah, a lot of people sort of drinking hotels, and there’s a few bars, but it’s, it’s really different. And obviously they have a craft beer scene that’s big, but it’s just so different to traditional pubs. And I’ve sort of, like, grown up in in pubs, and it was a huge shock for me, yeah, yeah.

Maddie 52:22
So you felt that, like, passionately about it, that you wanted to come back?

Alice Batham 52:25
Yeah.

Maddie 52:26
She came back from Australia, and then you did your masters in brewing?

Alice Batham 52:29
yeah. So I finished my English degree, and then went into my masters at Nottingham. So that was just one year, and it was really good. All of the lecturers were incredible. A lot of them worked at Bass and, you know, sort of like older companies that have had practical experience, so you’re getting the academic side, but also the hands on side. And that, for me, was, like, really important.

Maddie 52:49
Yes, you learn on the job, don’t you?

Alice Batham 52:52
Yeah,

Maddie 52:52
If you had to pick one hot Friday for the rest of your brewing career, what are you picking?

Alice Batham 52:58
It would have to be Goldings. But if I was to sort of choose something else, I’ve really enjoyed brewing with Olicana® over the years, I think it works really well in sort of pale ale cask beers. And I just like the fact, again, that it’s a UK hop that’s important to us to use UK grown varieties. I think it’s part of your it was part of your programme, wasn’t it?

Maddie 53:22
Yeah, part of the hop development program.

Alice Batham 53:24
Yeah, I just like how it’s still quite subtle, and it’s not, it doesn’t have ridiculously high alphas, but you can make sort of a nice, sort of juicier pale out like whoa. What we doing? I use it actually last year in a special that I did, that you guys did with us, and it was the first time that we’d ever had like, a different hop in the brewery, everyone was freaking out.

Maddie 53:54
What is your current favourite beer?

Alice Batham 53:56
Current favorite beer has to be bathers first bitter, because I just drink so much of it. I know it’s really boring to say your own

Maddie 54:03
No, not at all

Alice Batham 54:05
If I was to choose another one, um, I really love, obviously, I worked at Thornbridgefor a bit. I really love their lager Lucas, when we were on shift, like a lot of the Brewers used to drink that it’s just really refreshing, and easy drinking. Yeah. And I think as well, like, what I really loved about making lagers is, like, and I had this at Brewster’s, is testing it when it’s brewing. I actually, I brewed our Christmas beer on Monday, and it’s still going at the moment, but I’ve been tasting it a little bit, and it’s just quite nice, actually, to sort of see where it’s at.

Maddie 54:38
Yeah, see the evolution if it of it, favourite beer festival? Do you have one? Have you been to many?

Alice Batham 54:44
I’ve been to quite a few. We have one in a couple of weeks here, the Dudley winter Ales festival. And that is a lot of fun because it’s a lot of sort of wintry stout sporters, those type of beers. Yes, and it’s just nice to sort of. See the local community come together, and people that you know that will like go to some of the pubs, and, yeah, it’s just, it’s just quite sort of low key, but wholesome.

Maddie 55:11
What’s one item in the brewery that you couldn’t live without?

Alice Batham 55:15
This is gonna sound really boring, but I really couldn’t live without post it notes. I think I did pick this up from Thornbridge. We used to write down what we needed to do in the day on a post it note, and have a pocket. And I’ve sort of now got about 10 post what it’s really bad because I put my I put my stuff in the wash all the time. I find, like, bits of yellow post it note.

Maddie 55:44
That’s a really important idea. I’m going to write that down. Yeah, and you put it in your pocket,

Alice Batham 55:47
I can’t live without them, like, especially because I’m not really in the office. I’m always looking around. I need, yeah, I need to be sort of saying I’ll need to that later.

Maddie 55:58
yeah, that’s true. I do like post it notes. So I would live by a post it note. That’s a good one. What would be your favorite song, album, music, artist, anything like that, to play during a brew day.

Alice Batham 56:10
That’s the tough one. YWe normally have the radio on, so we sort of tend to flick between Absolute radio. The guy is quite like, like classic rock, yeah, I sometimes put Absolute 90s on, which is quite fun, yeah? But yeah, I really like, I really like the Black Keys the band, and I think that they’re sort of quite upbeat. So I quite like getting going, Yeah, from putting like an album on occasionally, if I’m in on the weekend on my own, I’ll put like, Beyonce on or

Maddie 56:45
all the single ladies,

Alice Batham 56:50
That’s the best thing about weekend. You just come in and like, blast, blast your own music.

Maddie 56:59
How do you approach hop selection for different beer styles, if we’re doing specials or anything like that? Because obviously, like you said, with your traditional you’ve obviously got very set recipe for that. But for any new specials you do, how would you approach hop selection? What factors do you personally find influences your choice?

Alice Batham 57:19
One of the main things for us is that they need to be whole leaf, just because of the kit that we’ve got here, we use a hop back, so we’re not really using any pellets in the brewery. So I need to sort of think about how that works in terms of the vessel size, because we have to create, like, a certain depth with the hops for the hop bed to clarify the wort during the brew process. So that is actually sort of something quite process driven, that drives hop selection. Again, we sort of don’t tend to make super high IBU beers here. So that would also come into it, what the alphas are.

Maddie 57:59
Do you go for the sort of lower end alpha?

Alice Batham 58:01
yeah, definitely.

Maddie 58:02
You came round up the fields and harvest didn’t you? Did you find anything interesting?

Alice Batham 58:08
Yeah it’s just amazing to hear the farmers talk about what they go through. And I think there’s so much disconnect with that, from what the farmers are having to deal with to then, sort of obviously the brewing industry has its own issues, and then the pubs and hospitality has its own issue. So actually, just going and chatting to them about all of the things that they’re facing and realising, like, where all of these ingredients come from to create this one product that is sat in a pub like this. You know, it’s such a huge journey, and I’ve really enjoyed going out to the farms, I think it’s, like, really important.

Maddie 58:41
Hopefully the weather was all right?

Alice Batham 58:43
Yeah was good. I did see a video of a tent flying around.

Maddie 58:53
Can you share a challenging situation that you’ve encountered in your brewing career and how you overcame it?

Alice Batham 58:59
I think a lot of stuff sort of happened at Brewster’s that I had to overcome quite quickly just because I sort of like a one man team for quite a while. I remember once, when I was first at a training I was doing like dry hopping, and I was recirculating it, but without thinking, I put it through the spray ball in top of the tank, so it really, it just, it just like, clogged up the spray ball. And it’s just sort of like overcoming things like that, yeah, little bits like that where I’m like, how, where was my head at?

Maddie 59:33
I mean, it happened in every job, doesn’t it? Who is your biggest inspiration in brewing?

Alice Batham 59:39
Like, being part of the family that I’m in. It’s just incredible to sort of think back, especially having my dad around at the moment and just sort of working with him and hearing stories from his career, and then thinking back to my granddad and all of our sort of great granddads, and that it’s it’s just such an incredible thing to be part of. And I feel really, really proud and really lucky to be part of it. Sarah at Brewsters, who first trained me and hired me, it was also like a big inspiration. And I think going into a female led brewery at that point, when I just finished my masters, it was a really good decision for me. And I think actually it might have, I might have entered the industry in a very different way. Had I not been employed by a female Brewer and a female led and owned brewery. She’s done so much throughout her career. And yeah, definitely working with her was a really good starting point for me. I think the craft scene done a really good job at highlighting issues and you sort of having groups now, like, you know, Crafty Beer Girls and Birmingham has their own Brum Beer Babs, those are really important groups for women to meet up. But, it’s really tricky in production to find women who want to work in IT courage, especially with Brum Beer Babs, like, encourage men and women to come. You know, like, it’s not about just women coming to these things. It’s about having those conversations. But actually, when you sort of like, look at the stats, we actually do need to shout about it. Yeah, we’ve got, we’ve got to improve representation. And until it reaches 5050, right? We need to, sort of, yeah, be pushing and helping, helping people out. That’s why I try and encourage so younger females, only females, to come and come and do, like a day with me at the brewery. I recently, well, a couple of years ago now, probably now, I had a young woman come who now works at Wye Valley, and she just did a day with me here. And it’s, yeah, it’s important to me to exchange the opportunities that we wouldn’t necessarily know could be presented to them, right?

Maddie 59:39
Yeah, I was gonna say, Did you always want to follow in your family’s footsteps? But you already talked about that a little bit earlier. But again, you and your sister. Was it something your sister always wanted to do as well?

Alice Batham 1:01:05
No, no, not. Not really. I think my parents were quite adamant. They didn’t want to put that pressure on us. They wanted us to sort of come back to the business in our own way, and if we wanted to. I’ve got an another sister, Ruth, who doesn’t work in the business, and she knows that that was the right decision for her, and there’s no sort of guilt in that, or anything like that. My sister Claire, she actually ran one of our pubs for a fair number of years, so she went into it that through that route, and has sort of done the on trade side of it, and that’s really good for her. And yeah, it actually just works so nicely. Yeah, yeah.

Maddie 1:02:39
Do you ever butt heads of anything. Me and my sister could not work with

Speaker 2 1:02:46
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s good actually. I guess having sort of her in the pub side of me in the production, it means that we sort of have our own strengths and weaknesses, and yeah, it just means we can help each other.

Maddie 1:02:59
You can appreciate you’re good at that, I’m good at this

Alice Batham 1:03:05
It’s great. She brings, like, food in for me sometimes as well. And I’m like, a little McDonald’s breakfast sometimes when I’m mashing in. Yeah, definitely.

Maddie 1:03:14
I do love that. If you weren’t in the brewing industry, what would you be doing? She obviously did English at uni. Do you think that’s you would have gone down that route?

Alice Batham 1:03:23
I don’t think I would have. I don’t, after having such a, like, active, manual job for most, like, all my career, I just, I don’t think I would have done that. I actually think I would have, I would have, like, loved to go into farming or something like that. I know it’s really difficult, but Yeah, something like that. Maybe.

Maddie 1:03:40
Yeah. Do you have any other interests or hobbies outside of brewing?

Alice Batham 1:03:45
Yes, and I try to make sure I, like stay on top of those things, because I think it can sometimes be, especially with being in, like a family business, it can be sort of all consuming.

Maddie 1:03:57
I was gunna say, it can become your life 24/7

Alice Batham 1:04:01
Which is not, you know, it’s not a bad thing. But everyone needs downtime, right? I really like swimming. I’m quite active, sort of outside work. I walk my dog whenever I can. I’ve got a Cocker Spaniel, oh, she’s very cute

Maddie 1:04:14
hectic?

Alice Batham 1:04:15
Yeah, she is hectic. She comes to the brewery with me quite a bit, actually. And she, yeah, she really likes coming here and sort of seeing everyone, and we’re quite like a creative family as well. So I’m really into, like, drawing, making stuff, sewing, that type of thing. Oh, nice, cool.

Maddie 1:04:32
Like, what advice would you give to anyone wanting to enter the brewing industry?

Alice Batham 1:04:38
Work Experience! Do as much as you can, get around as many breweries as you can, because they’re all so different, having worked in sort of cask brews, and then Thornbridge, which was very like production driven everywhere, just has completely different kit. You know, it’s, it’s so many different sort of ways of making beer and producing it. It and, yeah, just, just try, if you can, try and get around as many as you can. And I think if you approach most breweries, they will, they would be happy for you to do that. Obviously, I know like doing unpaid work isn’t great long term, but, um, yeah, just, see what’s out there.

Maddie 1:05:18
I suppose it’s a lot of early mornings, isn’t it? So if you’re willing to sacrifice a few hours in the morning before the year of work. Then if it’s something you’re passionate about and you want to do that, I guess you can just go. Just got to put yourself out there.

Alice Batham 1:05:29
Yeah, definitely. And just sort of trying different beers, and sort of trying to understand where they’re coming from, what processes have been used, and getting to know that type of thing is, yeah, it’s good.

Maddie 1:05:42
How do you navigate the balance between tradition and innovation with developing your special recipes and compared to what you’ve got from your core range?

Alice Batham 1:05:57
It’s hard. Yeah, we’re obviously extremely old company. We’re coming up to our 150th anniversary.

Yeah. So we’re so proud of that we’re so we’re just so proud of the pubs, and I think maintaining that consistency and quality is pretty much what I spend most of my time on. I definitely wouldn’t ever change anything about the best bitter, or the mild Ale, or the triple x that we brew at Christmas that’s really important to us. And I think especially at the moment within the industry, it’s important to sort of see the value in that, and see the value in a consistent quality cask ale, or people just want to come into the pub know what they’re getting. And like I said, Yeah, I spend so much time making sure that the bitter especially, is just super consistent, so that’s important. But then the innovation side, it’s something that we sort of try to progress with, I guess it’s something that I’ve pushed a little bit more. But I also am sort of quite wary of the fact that I don’t want to just do a load of random beers just for the sake of it. We’re really lucky that our product is so is so well loved and so well followed, and we can’t sort of thank our, you know, like loyal customers enough for that, because they drive the product, they drive the throughput, which is so important for cask. But, yeah, maybe some of them are in the pipeline.

Maddie 1:07:25
You’ve got how many pubs now?

Alice Batham 1:07:27
So we’ve got 12 pubs. Wow, yeah. So they’re mostly in the Black Country. We’ve got a few stuff on the outskirts, but yeah, we like to keep it really local. And I think as like, with my head brewer hat on, it’s really important for cask that it’s not traveling too far, miles and miles.

Maddie 1:07:47
What is the last beer brewed? Slash are brewing that you sort of talk to us about your Christmas beer?

Alice Batham 1:07:53
Yes, the Triple X. That’s the Triple X. Yeah. So it’s around about six and a half percent amber ale that we need to use. Yeah, it’s basically very similar hopping to our Best Bitter, but with a few other tweaks, it’s just feels really Christmassy, and it feels really think when you know that it’s in the pubs, you know that Christmas is coming, and my grandma actually really likes drinking Triple X, so to try and get her to go and have half a pint with us every Christmas, I think I had one pint once, and then ended up just falling asleep on my parents floor.

Speaker 2 1:08:37
We always get some stories from the pubs because I think people, um, sort of tend to think that it’s like the bitter and we’ll have pints of it, but you just can’t, you’ve got to be careful.

Maddie 1:08:47
Yeah, is there any particular food that you’d pair that with?

Alice Batham 1:08:51
Oh, probably some, like, cheese and crackers that type of, like, Christmasy maybe, like, yeah a bit of pickle. I quite like that. Like, a few sort of, yeah, like, you know, you only get a cheese board, yeah, it’s not just cheese and crackers, yeah, that sort of thing.

Maddie 1:09:10
Yeah, that’s my favorite.

Fuggles or Golding? But you’ve obviously said Golding. Do you ever use Fuggles? Yes, yeah, as well. Yeah, you’d pick Goldings. Would you?

Alice Batham 1:09:21
Would Yeah. So we actually use Goldings in cask, so we dry hop with them. They just smell incredible. It’s just a really, yeah, really, really, really nice.

Maddie 1:09:34
And then final question, what is next for you in the industry?

Alice Batham 1:09:38
Just sort of steering this ship, I guess through it, it’s taken me quite a while to sort of feel not comfortable but settled here. And I think because I moved back during COVID, everything was still quite uncertain, and the pubs were sort of doing that in and out thing of serving, but not serving and that, but yeah, it took a while.

Speaker 2 1:10:00
So, as we’ve sort of talked about, I would love to hire a female if I could for the brewery, it would just kind of bring the apprentice, yeah? Like I said, like maintaining bathing quality is the biggest part of my job. Full friend, that was awesome. Yeah, great. Well, that’s all my question. Is there anything else you wanted to add? Or just that, like, farms has basically provided us with hops forever. So like, Yeah, I think the relationship that we have with you guys is really important to us as well, and also we do, like the hop selection with Paul and John farvin in, like, in the end of the year and around Christmas time, and it’s just, yeah, it’s really important to us. And I just sort of like thinking about the fact that our my ancestors were, like, going over to Malvern to get the harps, and yeah, now you are Yeah. It’s just great.

Maddie 1:10:51
It’s just, it’s a family, really, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, family. Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Alice Batham 1:10:56
Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thanks for coming. Yeah,