Patrick Whittle
Welcome back to spreading hoppiness. This week, we’re down at Teme Valley brewery with our own special projects manager Ben Adams and head brewer Chris Gooch, between them, they have over 30 years of brewing experience, and they’ll be diving into the topic of green hops, the differences, the similarities, and what you need to know if you wish to use them in your brews.

Ben Adams
Hello and welcome to the Charles Faram podcast. My name is Ben Adams. I’m the Special Projects Manager at Charles Faram. I’ve been at Charles Faram for 10 years, and prior to that, I was a brewer for 10 years. We’re in the beautiful Talbot hotel in Knightwick in Worcestershire. Home to Teme Valley brewery, and I’m here with Chris Gooch, head brewer. Hi, Chris.

Chris Gooch
Hi. So yes, Chris Gooch, Teme Valley brewery. I’ve been the brewer here since 1997 virtually when it opened in that time, obviously, brewing industry, the hop industry, everything has changed dramatically, but we still only use hops from Herefordshire and Worcestershire in the beer.

Ben Adams
Fantastic. And we’re here specifically to talk about green hops, also called wet hops or fresh hops, depending on where you are in the world or what you’re sort of used to. But specifically we’re talking about hops that haven’t been dried. So these are hops directly off the bind, freshly picked, and then going into your brew, hopefully pretty quickly. That’s what we’re going to talk all about today, how they used, why they used, the best way to use them, the best ones to use, when to use them, and all the, all that sort of, all that sort of piece. So first, maybe, if we kind of kick off, why do you use green hops? What’s, the reason that you would use green hops?

Chris Gooch
So it’s pretty straightforward. When the brewery opened in 1997. It was opened by the Clift family. So they owned the Talbot hotel. They also owned Lulsley Court across the river, which was growing something over 300 acres of hops at the time, and it made a lot of sense to have the halfway house of hops from the farm going into the brewery and then being sold over the bar at pub. The brewery was opened, I think, at the end of July 1997 so just before hop picking started. And you can’t miss when you when you’re working on a hop farm during harvest, you can’t miss the aroma that’s around you all the time, and all of that dissipates into the air, and it’s, completely lost. Skillful kilning and harvesting at the right time obviously puts a lot to aroma in the hops, but the feeling then is that, can we get hold of some of that that’s lost to the atmosphere? So that first year, I think there were two green hop beers brewed. They were just pale malts, no colored malts, and they timed in very nicely with hop picking so one at the beginning, one at the end. 1998 when I fully got the hang of the brewing kit and probably really didn’t want to do any time in the picking machine for one reason or another. Anyone who’s worked in a picking machine will know, you know, if you can still get paid and not be there, it’s really quite a good deal. And I was still looking after the sheep and cattle at Lulsley court at the time as well. So I had two jobs to juggle. But in 1998 we brewed once every week of hop picking with a single variety. So hop picking in those days used to last for five weeks, at least, partly because there was a bigger acreage of hops, partly because, the minute they started picking, it used to start raining, which used to slow things down terrifically, tractors sliding all over the place, the kilns took longer to heat up, and everything like that, so very comfortably for the next few years on a five barrel Kit. So making 20 firkins at a time, I used to brew every week hop picking with a different variety, sometimes with two different varieties of Goldings, which was a nice contrast. And then varieties like Challenger and Northdown, which I know they’re dual purpose hops, but you don’t often get the opportunity to taste them as the single aroma hop. So opportunity was the biggest point. And there’s a lot to learn about finessing green hops going and getting them when they’re absolutely ripe. So when I was hand in pocket with the farm, it was very easy to talk to the governor and the foreman about what the best day to pick each variety would be. So having the kettle, you know, having the mash done, going up to the farm, picking them up on the to show them, showcase them at their best, was very easy. Now, obviously, the first time hops were used in beer, wherever in history, that was, they would have been wet, because nobody would have gone to the trouble of drying hop cones unless they knew they were useful. So brewers throughout history will have used green hops and at the time, I think. Think King and Barnes used to do a harvest ale with fresh hops. Wadworths used to do Malt and Hops. But I think that was just using the first barley and the first dried hops of each harvest. I’m not sure it was a green.

Ben Adams
Yeah I can remember Malt and Hops is the first green hop beer I ever tasted, and this would have been probably about this 1997/8 and I went to the bar and ordered a beer. I’ll have that beer still early in my journey. And being astounded, I said, this is completely different to anything, anything else I’ve ever tasted. So it’s lovely that you’ve mentioned that was my first ever green hop beer.

Chris Gooch
And that is the fantastic thing. If all the dominoes line up, then you get an absolutely superb snapshot and something unexpected, we’re sort of slipping slightly out of the narrative, but so then the farm got sold, and the coordination with the farm wasn’t quite as good, and we moved to a bigger kit, so it’s 10 to 15 barrels now, and that doesn’t give quite the leeway it used to. You know, we could have the first brew sold before I brewed the last one, and there was always space in the cold store, always cooperage to keep up, whereas now it’s a much bigger commitment. And we also brew green hop beer for bottling. So given that harvest is condensed, sometimes it’s all over in three weeks, which is really distressing. You know, there’s a cloud of dust from the tractors because it never rains anymore. It all comes a week earlier than it used to, and the acreage is less so now we brew one green hop beer for cask every year, and that does mean I’ve got a bit more freedom to go out and pick which hop variety we use, but especially four years ago, nothing worked properly. We actually ended up picking on the last day of harvest. Nearly didn’t produce a green hop beer at all. And as tell me if you if you got question, because, as always, the difficulty is getting me to stop talking. What’s the point in brewing a green hop? Here that there’s several appealing things for brewers. So one is, it’s truly seasonal. You know, there have been traditions of seasonality in beer. You know, the doors of continental breweries open on the first day of the winter beer, and there’s this lavish celebration of that for the next six months, there’s going to be a dark, strong beer on the bar. You know, pale beers are easier to drink in the summer. So, you know, summer ales tend to focus on those. But all of those things are fairly artificial.

Ben Adams
Yeah and they’ve all been muddied over time. It is perhaps the last one standing. It is the you can only do this then absolutely, yeah.

Chris Gooch
And you know, for somebody who’s going to be brewing his Christmas beer for bottles sometime in the next four weeks, yes, it does. It does make it difficult, but you can literally only brew green hop beers if you get hold of fresh hops. So that means it’s got to be during harvest. Hops are so moist they compost very quickly. So you’ve got to have the ability to get those hops to the brewery and use them ready before they’ve started to go slimy and horrible. So, you know,it’s an enterprise, it’s a point of difference in the brewing year. And I was talking to a brewer this morning. You know, so much of what we aim for is consistency, especially for brewers who brew call brands over and over again. You know, we’re specking very tight,everything is under control. Green, hop is you never know what you’re getting.

Ben Adams
That is definitely, although it’s out of the norm, it’s it’s really exciting that, because you have to, it is a guess. It is a it’s a punt on what’s going to happen. It changes every year. It changes by the day. Yep, and that’s fun. It’s an exciting piece to see. I always when I was a brewer, I judged the success of my beer on whether it was it came out as I imagined it. It wasn’t whether it sold brilliantly, or you whether you won any awards. I mean, they were nice, but it was whether my what I conceived before I brewed it, and then I planned it out and brewed it, if it came out similar to that. That was the success of my piece. And that’s the wonderful thing about green hop beer is, if you’re lucky enough to be near hops, you can start learning to assess it as you’re going through the year, and talking to the farmer, understanding how ripe it’s going to be, but still, at the end, it’s a, it’s a hail Mary, isn’t it?

Chris Gooch
There’s, there’s so many things about it that introduce random elements. So I have carefully planned a brewing day, mashed in and gone towards the farm to pick up the hops before now, only to see a plume of smoke and fire engines and turn around and go to the next hop farm where I can think of to see. See if I can get some from there. And you have to remember back in the in the last century, in the 90s, when nobody had a mobile phone. If you wanted to phone a farm during hop picking and expect someone to answer the phone there, that wasn’t going to happen. So then you’re driving on to the next one and the next one, it isn’t that unusual to plan your day and turn up and find that the picking machines broke. And nobody can help you. Or, you know, one variety has had to be picked early because of disease and because of the weather and because they’re ripping too quickly. So you come away with kilos and kilos of a hop you hadn’t anticipated. But that doesn’t, that doesn’t really matter.

Ben Adams
That brings up an interesting question, which we get asked a lot, which is variety is, what variety should you use? And there’s 1000s of different opinions on what the what the right thing to do is, what’s your opinion on the importance of variety? Of variety, choice

Chris Gooch
With green hop beers. I don’t, I don’t really mind too much. I just want to make green hop beer with something that’s been picked at that time. You know if, if North down was still being grown in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, I would love to brew with that again. But sadly, it’s not. I’ve never, I’ve never brewed a green hop beer with experimental varieties, because those are, you know, they’re already in demand and sold. And John down here grows organic hops, and he can’t really spill any of those over into into green hop beers.

Ben Adams
Well, your five kilos of wet green hops is, you know, is, potentially, is much more valuable as a dried hop, so you can kind of spread it around. So yeah, so the we tend not to do that as well. So the I’m of a similar opinion that variety isn’t that important, that it’s for it’s not the most important thing to think about when thinking about green hops, that’s for a couple of reasons. I think the main one is the real varietal characteristics you get from a hop are only truly expressed after it’s been dried, so you’re not the difference is much smaller when you’re talking about green hops. Obviously they do express themselves differently than there’s different oil content and different flavours and characteristics in there, but they’re,much closer in green hops than they are in their finished, their finished piece. And the second one, which you’ve alluded to, is you don’t know what you’re going to get until, but basically the day, maybe the day before, you can make guesses, and we can we work with our farmers when we’re supplying green hops, as to that looks like a decent window in that week of what that sort of variety might be, but that’s totally subject to change up until the day. So if you’re we would never recommend that brewers fixate on a variety. I want that variety because you’re more than likely it’s going to go wrong.

Chris Gooch
I would say there’s about 60/40, chance you’ll be, working with something else. The other thing is about selection of variety. You know, there isn’t a variety of British hops that I wouldn’t want to brew within the first place. You know, I’m perfectly happy with all of them. The when you go to the farm. So after everything’s been kilned, it’s you’ve got whole days harvest there, harvested from all over the yard, harvested in the morning, in the evening, the kilns been filled, and then it gets emptied out, and they feather, and then they’re baled. That’s a big process of homogenization, so that the output to that yard is mixed. And you can pretty much benchmark what those hops are going to be like across across that day’s harvest. But when you go and get them off the picking machine, they’ve just come off one row of the field. So that tractor may have started down in the bottom, in the shade, and ended up top the field, where it’s a bit dry. The microclimate, people don’t understand how much it varies within a hop yard. If they’re very, very ripe, you get a different spectrum of flavour to things that are underipe. So you know, the trueness to type green hops, as you said, is just not, that predictable. Yeah, when you when you put them in the van and you drive home, they always smell brilliant, bit overwhelming. And then, you know, somehow you’ve got to bundle this huge amount of hops into the copper and they’re still smelling good, and then you’re hanging over the underbac and hanging over the fermenter, wait to see has it transferred in or not. But as always, it’s only when you pick up the beer you can taste it, and there is, you know, there is a risk that it’s not going to be as satisfying as you thought, it’s always going to be palatable beer. It’s always going to have a hop character. But, you know, as frustrating it is as it is for brewers, you might just be unlucky and not get the expression of aroma that you used to, but then you just got to imagine how frustrating it has been a hop farmer dealing with those bloody plants, you know, 10 months of the year when they literally won’t do what you want.

Ben Adams
I think that’s for those brewers have been lucky enough to go to a hop field during harvest. It is a magical time. I mean, it is intoxicating. And trying to capture just some of that magic and get it into your pint glasses is the best you can, the best you can get. And it often happens that people are disappointed because they remember that day in the field, you know, if they won’t pick them up themselves or from memory, and they can go, that’s, that’s what I wanted to steal and get into that glass. And a lot of disappointed, and that can come down, I mean, to how ripe that variety is, I think that’s a key piece. You the difference. And it can be a day, it can be how how open it’s been, to the sunshine, it can be the time of day. Can be the temperature it was picked. All those things have a have a huge effect. But trying to find that absolute sweet spot is, well, as you’ve shown, it’s almost a life’s work.

Chris Gooch
I mean, on the other side of the coin, you know, when they’re expressing the full spectrum of aromas, you can get things that are not true to type. So we’ve had brambling cross that tasted a peach, you know, we’ve had Northdown that tasted a ground, smelled a ground black pepper, Goldings, one green, hop with Goldings in that smelled every single hop variety you could think so that, and that was in the beer. So there’s a, you know, a mercurial chance, but I do, I do wonder as well, if everybody understands how much green hop to you. So I’ve got it in my notes here

Ben Adams
So we’re talking when you’re receiving your dried hops and leaf or pellet form, you’re looking at moisture sort of somewhere between eight and 10% that’s usually classic. And anything coming off the farm is 75/80% 85% of its really wet, yep. So it’s a you’ll it’s a factor of 10, almost. We would generally recommend that for in terms of usage that brewers use somewhere between five and eight times, which is a massive charge of hops,

Chris Gooch
It is and you know, they’re much bulkier than hops that have been bailed. So it’s not just the time it takes to get them in the copper, but then you have to make sure they sink. I suppose you get a cone of hops on top that just doesn’t do anything for you. And then the runoff from the copper can be very extended, because there’s much more there’s much more air pockets to entrap work.

Ben Adams
So you’re adding, straight to the in terms of addition, addition rates, you’re adding that sort of, that sort of fact

Chris Gooch
Yeah, you have to think about it as for every kilo of hops that dried, you get 920 grams for every kilo of hops when they’re wet, you only get 150 grams of dry matter. So as you said, you know, it’s at least five hedging your bets that things haven’t come off, ideally, probably six. And you know, it’s surprising how many bags that takes up and how lengthy it is with the lid of the copper open, trying to get them all in there.

Ben Adams
So you add, you’re adding at the end of the boil.

Chris Gooch
Yeah, I don’t use them for bitterness at all anymore, because that’s even more unpredictable. So we tend to use the same bitterness that we would have in one of our call beers because it’s a known quantity, then exactly right? It’s a very pale beers, so you haven’t got a lot of balance from the malt to hide any any problems with over over bittering. So year on year, I’d hope the bitterness in them is pretty consistent, and the only variant then is, is the aroma, I think,

Ben Adams
Yeah, it can’t be overstated about how difficult the process can be, because the matter is, the amount of hops is frightening that you have to put in to get to get a result, a result you you want, and you want to capture that big green you want to capture the aroma of the hop field, and I at least five times your normal charge your aroma hop, and because of the stress that puts on your kit and the brewer, I would definitely back up that you use dried hops for your bitterness.

Chris Gooch
Yeah.

Ben Adams
So a small charge. Charge, yeah, just get your sort of base level. There will be bitterness pick up, obviously, from your green hop charge. But yeah, I would probably go for getting 75% of my bitterness from that first first charge. And just try and make sure you’re not overloading.

Chris Gooch
Yeah, the and the other thing is, if you’re putting that much wet, dry material in and boiling for 90 minutes, you are going to pick up some vegetal kind of cooked leaf, cooked greenery flavours.

Ben Adams
Whend do you add them?

Chris Gooch
Five minutes before the end of boil, and then spend 10 minutes squashing them down. And then, you know it the run off is always a lot longer than it would be, so there’s more contact time with them. We haven’t got a very sophisticated method of running off from the copper so we don’t chill the wort before the hops go in. We haven’t got a whirlpool, no hop back. So it’s the contact time between the hops in the copper that’s important. And, you know, slowly running off,

Ben Adams
I think heat, I think that is the right time to add them. I would not genuinely recommend using them as a dry hop just because the potential infection issues, you’re taking something straight off the field. Kilning, in the processing and backing of hops gets rid of a lot of creepy crawlers and bugs which are in the field. So I think you’re opening yourself up to infection issues if you had as a dry hop. So I think contact time with boiling wort is important. I think you mentioned a hop back. If you’ve got a hop back, fantastic. Use that

Chris Gooch
If it’s big enough.

Ben Adams
Yeah, we see quite a lot of brewers using their mash tun, so coming from their copper loading up the mash tun, if they haven’t got a hop back, loading up the mash tun, and then using that, which can also work

Chris Gooch
That would involve cleaning the mash tun twice, I don’t think I am paid enough for that.

Ben Adams
Well, that’s what your brewery apprentice is for. Yeah, to scrub away. But that’s potentially another way of doing it. Yes, I think some people use bags as well. So they pack it with packing bags, and then they can easily get out, because it is a huge amount of matter in there. Another thing is sparging. So if you’ve got the ability, because they that will soak up a lot of wort as well. So some brewers like to sparge afterwards, just to try and reclaim some a little bit of that.

Chris Gooch
As long as you’ve got treated liquor to do it with, you don’t want chlorine going in on top of everything else.

Ben Adams
No, and you don’t want to drag all your trub through as well. So you’ve got to be cautious about how you might do that. But yeah, it does suck up a lot these green hops. So okay, so we’ve talked about variety, we’ve talked about addition rates and addition times. Are there any other tips or tricks or?

Chris Gooch
The it really is nice to have, like, one foot in the farming supply chain. So if you can make contact with a grower over and above, you know, if the hops come off, yeah, if they have, it’s still very, very nice to emphasise,for the drinking public, how, how tight this chain is when brewers don’t do well, hop growers don’t do well if we don’t look after hop growers, you know, it doesn’t matter if someone in another country wants to grow the kind of hops we associate with traditional British beer, they won’t taste the same. So if we don’t look after our hop growers, traditional British beer, well, it doesn’t have much of a future. So it’s a very, very, very good opportunity to talk directly to the landlords and the public about how vital British hop growing is, you know, and I’m sure most brewers understand that not everybody wants to use British hops. And, you know, there are fine hops grown elsewhere in the world, but it is absolutely vital to give hop growers something, to aim for, something, to understand that, you know what they do is valued. So it’s it’s a two way street. Make sure the hop grower and hop merchant know how much you value that resource. And then make sure that landlords know about the value of British hops and the importance they play in keeping traditional beer alive. And then make sure that they’re punters and punters for bottle and understand that message as well. So, you know, you’ve made something that’s special. You’ve made something that stands out from the pack. And you know, just push, push, push on the fact that it wouldn’t be possible without British hop growers.

Ben Adams
Brilliant. They’re here in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and also in Kent October is a lovely time of year because you can, you can conglomerate all these wonderful green hop beers and being able to taste them side by side. And especially, what we were lucky enough to do here is drink those with growers, they’re so intimately involved with these hops throughout their throughout their lives, the hops and the growers, and to be able to see that what you’ve captured from their field, and be able to get that into a glass, and to see that is a is a very special thing.

Chris Gooch
If only it was easier to encourage hop growers to drink beer normally so sober and restrained, but we do. We, you know, we have the green hop festival here, which this year will be the second weekend in October. And there have been times when I’ve put on five of our beers together, each with a single hop variety. I’ve had beers from other breweries that had the same variety from the same farm on a different day of harvest, different brewing kit, different brewers, different yeast. So then you can talk to people who come in about where those differences arise. You know, Ledbury Real Ales do a fantastic job of kicking out something like 20 different single hop variety, green hop beers. That’s always, always a marvel to look at, you know, sadly, it’s also a time when I can’t help reflecting on the number of growers that aren’t growing hops anymore, because I would have had hops from them over the years. And also the number of local breweries that aren’t around anymore that used to do green hop beers, which, you know, and I don’t think I’ll ever quite get used to that when you drive around the lanes of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, as much as I do. You know, hops missing out of the landscape is, you know, is a bit troubling. But yeah, you know, it’s like tasting notes on hop varieties. If you, if you pick up a hop variety and you expect it to put chocolate notes in your beer, you’re going to be a bit conflicted by what comes out, because it’s just a way of grading, what the potential is, when you add in all the congeners of everything else that happens in a brewery, you know, what comes out is a kind of special magic, and not always what you predict, but you can find, over the years tasting green hop beers consistencies that are very hard to put words on, consistencies of and part of that is because tasting beer is never completely objective. So you pick up a beer, and it’s familiar in every aspect, and you remember last year and the year before. You know, it’s a little time machine for me, with 27 years of growing the green hops, as long as I do get the time to patiently drink each one. Whereas, you know, it’s a busy time of year for us, absolutely, sometimes it flashes by and I think, bloody hell, I’ve, you know, I’ve had Hobson’s green hop beer this year, and I’ve got to wait another 12 months. Before itcomes around again. It’s

Ben Adams
It’s gone, it’s much like hop harvest. You spend the whole year building up to it, and then you. Yes, it’s a little flash and turns around. Well, talking of tasting beer, that sounds, I notice we’ve got in front of us, okay, same as Hop Nouvelle.

Chris Gooch
Yeah so they’re always called Hop Nouvelle, and I always keep a few bottles back. But this is, this is the last of the 2020 brew, which was brewed with Challenger from Brookhouse farm. So for a couple of years, it made a lot of sense when we delivered beer to Bromyard Folk festival, and the van was then empty to drive on to Brookhouse and pick up whatever they were picking at the time, and then come back, and that went in the brewery then. So we could very efficiently do two jobs with one journey. So because this is the last bottle, I actually tasted this one, it’s a little bit excitable, but it’s a bottle condition beer, four years old, and nucleated glasses. So all of that condition is going to come out, but it does mean you’d be able to get the aroma straight away the month of September, which, and this was the last one we had to do. The others, because those brands had to be on the shelf. And this one waited until the very, very last day of picking Instone Court. Simon Parker was still picking Jester. It was nice to have the opportunity to use Jester. Yeah, I really like it.

Ben Adams
Whilst you’re pouring out, I’ll talk about the hop picking. When we first started growing Jester. We’re talking to our growers about how best to grow Jester. We assumed, because if we wanted those big new world aromas, that we would let it go as ripe as possible. We wanted to leave it out in the sun and get it as ripe as we could. And some of those flavours started getting, I think, overripe. And so we’ve got some growers really pulling back their jester picking window to sort of mid September, and picking up some more of those sort of slightly cleaner citrus, sort of bearing characteristics from it. So this, but this was a late Jester, last day of the season.

Chris Gooch
Yeah, and I rashly made up my mind that it was perfect, partly because the whole process had been so difficult and stressful. So part of the reason it was so late was, I think they’d have power problems at Instone Court, they lost the grid generators. So, you know, another one of those sort of serendipitous things, that they were actually still hops being picked when the day came, and that’s lasted very well.

Ben Adams
I can, I can pick up green from that that does smell like fresh hops.

Chris Gooch
So it’s a long time since I’ve rubbed Jester. But there’s, there’s resin in that, there’s a sort of tart, difficult, isn’t it, when you’re when you’re not in a habit of describing things. But there’s a tar almost citrus flavour to it, but it’s not, you know, you would never narrow it down to lemon or orange or anything like that, or grapefruit. It’s just part of that ballpark.

Ben Adams
Yeah it’s, I think there’s maybe some current character in there, some slightly darker fruit. What is interesting is, that is different from dried Jester. Yeah, there’s a different characteristic in there. It’s cleaner, it’s fresher. And it that, does, eventhough though we’ve been talking about green hops for 40 minutes, so we’re already in the zone. But that brings to me, what putting your going to a kiln and seeing some fresh Jester is, that’s it’s captured some of that in there.

Speaker 1
Yeah and that is what I say to drinkers when we’re talking about green lots, is you have to think about it like the difference between using fresh herbs in cooking and dried herbs, you don’t necessarily get different flavours. You get more of them and more intensity of some of the things that are very volatile and disappear during drying. So, you know, it’s overlapping, it’s definitely characteristic, but you’re finding things that aren’t there. And the other thing that happens as well is, you know, when they’re turned out from the kiln and they’re feathered, you do get some oxidation of terpenes. So some compounds in the hops persist better in dried hops than they do in wet hops, because they don’t have the opportunity to oxidize for a start, the cone is still alive, so it’s still putting out antioxidants and quelling all of that. So you’re not really handling the same material. You’re handling a variation on the same material. Hopefully, if I’ve got that wrong about the terpene, someone jumped in and correct me.

Ben Adams
It’s interesting we do have you’ve mentioned a couple of times, which is feathered hops, and the feathered refers to hops when they’ve had some heat, is their brack sort of turn out, and they start just reacting to their heat, so they’re sort of partially dried, and the feathering can kind of refer to hops, or quite a lot of that stage. So either ones that have just kind of gone onto the kiln for an hour or two, all the way to towards the end of kilning. And we do have a couple of growers, and this is something which is not encouraged, because it’s quite a lot more difficult to logistically manage. But we do have a couple of growers who really insist on only using feathered hops, so they’re in that halfway house between full green and full dried and the moisture might be down to 50% or sort of 45% something like that. And you’re getting some of those, some of those terpenes have been fixed and have been bought on, but you’re still getting the fresh green character. So that, yeah, we do have a couple of brews who insist on.

It’s hard angle without it shattering.

It’s, yeah, I think you’ve got to, as I say, it’s, this is not to, anything sort of less than 20% and it’s all going to fall apart and you’re putting dust in. So yeah, it is. It’s literally usually onto the kiln for a couple of hours, just lightly spread out for a couple of hours. And then a way to go.

Chris Gooch
Well it’s interesting talking about the harvest window as well, because when, when the fields out the back here were full of hops, there was one row of Cascade out there, when Mark Andrews was running it. So every year I used to have all the Cascade hops that were grown in the UK, I think, just one row. But then Mark planted some out of Bosbury, and I wanted those for green hops. So it was one year where I put all of the logistics together, and Mark was actually finishing picking, and then three weeks later, starting everything up to harvest the Cascade after everything had stopped. And I don’t know if he still does that, but it is, you know, they were definitely successful. They made a great green, hop beer Cascade grown in the UK, I think again, you know, the terroir and what we used to from American Cascades, UK cCscade, almost it’s characteristic, but with a different emphasis,you know, and necessarily slightly lower intensity, but use a bit more. For God’s sake, they’re cheaper because they’re English, so use more of them. Now you don’t get the opportunity with green hop beers to mix your portfolio unless you’re very, very logistically inclined. You’re not going to go to two different growers on the same day and bring two together, and people like to play with a pallet hops to get everything they want in a beer. So, you know, it’s a rare opportunity to shift that focus and focus down, dig down into one variety.

Ben Adams
Yeah I think the word you used at the beginning of that snapshot, it’s trying to grab that, try and grab that out of the fields and try and get it into the pint glasses.

Chris Gooch
I think I’m picking up a little bit more of a characteristic grapefruit zest there, which might be because of the like the acerbic dry feel on the tongue is just a bit like tasting citrus piss.

Ben Adams
It’s slightly astringent as it is not. It’s not as far as bitter, but it is.

Chris Gooch
Yeah, but you know, if people can take the opportunity to go either on the HopWalk or through their own devices, to smell a hop kiln, to smell the hops, you know, being dried. That’s when you understand what vigorous and potent raw material it is. You know, when we do brewery tours, I always say to people, before we start, don’t put hops in your mouth, please. Because, you know, the public is doesn’t understand. Yeah, you know the very small amount of hops we use for bitterness. I emphasize that to people as well. You know, we have got terrific more material. It’s It’s so fortunate that somewhere, somewhere in history, somebody decided to put them in beer, because we would be a slightly less happy nation if somebody hadn’t done it. And to be sitting at this point in history on the back of all that brewing heritage, with so much available to us, so much that even in 27 years, you know, we can exert control over a process now that we couldn’t do at the beginning. You know, when I started brewing, we didn’t have Google, so something in the brewery broke down. I didn’t know who to go to get it. I used to literally have to take it out, to take it to another Brewer and say, do you know what this is. Whereas now, you know, even if you’re a home brewer, you can draw up brew sheets from all over the world. You can try and recreate the beers that you drink. You can use your imagination to push the boundaries. But this green hop beer is one way in which you know. You can go back to 1997 and say, we don’t know, we don’t know what’s around the corner.

Ben Adams
And you can listen to informative podcasts as well. One thing that just occurred to me is we do have lots of for those not fortunate enough to be right next to a hop yard or to, you know, come on, come on a HopWalk or some such, or can’t get hold of green hops within sort of 24 hours of them being picked to get into the beer, because that’s that’s the sort of maximum we would suggest, because they will start composting very, very quickly that people who can grow their own hops. So we do have lots of brewers who suggest growing their own hops, which is absolutely fine thing to do, but the picking and the drying of hops is a extremely complicated and difficult piece. So if you’re going to grow your own hops outside your tap room or on some land, you’ve got the what you should use those for green hopping. That’s the perfect time for using them. So you can, in one go, you can try and capture what you’ve grown. And get them into a beer. And we do have the few brewers in the UK. Beer Nouveau up in Manchester was one, the lamented beer nouveau in Manchester was one who collected hops from all around the city. So everyone would grow a plant or two, and then they would pick them and bring them in, all on a lotted day. And then they could conglomerate all their hops. And you had a you had a lovely picture of sort of urban Manchester green hop. So there’s some magical things you can do. And they do. They do capture people’s imagination and capture the spirit. It’s a wonderful sort of emotional thing to get involved in.

Chris Gooch
Stroud brewery as well. You know the allotment and garden holders. The massive advantage of that is, if you farm out the job of growing them, then you can farm out the job of picking them as well. Because there was one year I actually had to have a green hop beer ready very early, and hop picking was delayed by a week, so I had to go and get binds and pick 50 kilos of hops.

Ben Adams
It’s longer than it sounds.

Chris Gooch
Those skilled ladies in the hop yards back in the days before picking machines would probably pick 50 kilos before 8 in the morning, but it turned into a quite a trial. There’s definitely a nack to it much easier when they’re hanging up rather than when they’re on the floor. But it’s telling that I’ve never, never bothered doing that again.

Ben Adams
Well, you look around and you’ve got a huge tub of hops, and you go, well, that must be about 50 kilos eight, Slightly dispiriting.

Chris Gooch
Always the same. You know when, when walkers at anchor time were still picking and I used to think, I’ll just pop down there with a green sack and get 50 kilos. You go in, you get what you think is 50 kilos, and get it, and you realize you could go back and get twice as much. Yeah, you can’t underestimate how much volume they take up.

Ben Adams
Until you have to dig them out. And that’s what’s perhaps a nice, nice place to finish. Thank you so much for sharing your your knowledge. And 27 years of experience in green hops is it’s probably unrivaled. So thank you so much for sharing some of your knowledge with us. You’re welcome. Cheers

Patrick Whittle
From one brewery to the next. You join me as I talk to Yorkshire based brewery Goose Eye, learn about their family heritage and what hops they love to brew with. So welcome back to our Five Minutes with Faram segment. I’m here at Goose Eye Brewery today, so just to start off a conversation, if you guys could sort of introduce yourselves, your roles here, and anything else you want to say, really

Joe Atkinson
Yeah, I’m Joe. I’m Head Brewer, third generation. Granddad started it. Dad carried it on and I’m not carrying it on myself.

Dave Atkinson
I’m Dave Atkinson, owner of the brewery, part time Brewer when he’s on holiday, and chief tea maker.

Patrick Whittle
So to start our Five minutes for Faram segment, what is your favourite hop?

Joe Atkinson
Mine’s probably Nelson Sauvin,

Patrick Whittle
Why would that be?

Joe Atkinson
Just something different. I mean, I remember when I first got into brewing, like, and the big American hops came out, and I were like this is amazing, trying some and going what is that? And it was Nelson Sauvin and it ‘s just sort of stuck with me since and I love brewing with it as well.

Patrick Whittle
Do a lot of your beers include that hop?

Joe Atkinson
No, none of the core ones do. But any chance I get to do a special or a one off brew. I will always try to sneek it in there.

Dave Atkinson
Probably a little bit boring these days, but it has to be Chinook, just because, I know a lot of people use Chinook now, but this was our first real hop that we brewed with which took us brewery to the next level. So it’s always my favourite, really, for that reason, as well as I love beers with Chinook in

Patrick Whittle
Nice, so what would you say your favourite beer style is, to brew with and to drink?

Joe Atkinson
To brew with, pale ales or blondes, in session strength, and that is probably what I like to drink most, as well.

Dave Atkinson
Me too. Yes, pale, hoppy but not too hoppy. I think things are getting a little bit out of hand with hoppiness now, well, for my palate anyway, but a nice and moderately hop pale, mid strength from between 4% to 4.3%

Patrick Whittle
Very nice. So if you had name that one core beer, one favourite beer what would it be?

Joe Atkinson
Of ours.

Patrick Whittle
Either, you could do one for yours and then one from another brewery, from across the country or across the world really.

Joe Atkinson
Yeah. My favourite of ours is probably Spring Wells. 3.6% but enough flavour that you don’t get bored of it a proper session beer.

Patrick Whittle
What about you?

Dave Atkinson
Chinook, our Chinook is my favourite beer. Just because it’s exactly what I like to drink. Around the world? Ermmmm

Joe Atkinson
You don’t have to pick a wordly

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, I couldn’t tell you one from around the world. There’s so many good beers out there,

Patrick Whittle
Do you find that you guys make beers that you like to drink the best?

Dave Atkinson
100%

I think every Brewer starts brewing to their taste, but saying that, you know, I mean, I don’t drink a lot of our standard best bitter, the Goose Eye bitter, but now the sales on that have just been really, really good.

Patrick Whittle
I guess there’s so many different people, isn’t it? Everyone has their different pallets and that sort of thing to cater for a big range of people. It’s nice to brew what you’d have to drink. You also have to brew what sells as well.

Dave Atkinson
brewed, not brewed because we like our style of beer. It’s brewed for customer satisfaction

Patrick Whittle
Yeah definitely how often do you do one off special beers?

Joe Atkinson
we’ll try and do them once a month, but it’s as and when you gather me, you brew more, if like, you can sell one in two or three weeks. So you can brew one every two or three weeks. But then just gotta make room in your brew, schedule and if you can’t do that you can’t do that.

Patrick Whittle
Yeah, I guess you gotta keep enough space and time, obviously, for your core range and the stuff that sells as well. So when you’re sort of like, do you have a favourite, like, food and beer pairing at all? Like,

I mean, dad will have a pizza.

Do you do any food here in your Taproom? Yeah,

Dave Atkinson
we get a different street food vendor, the first Saturday in every month. So we have a different food come that each month, and they just set up outside. And

Patrick Whittle
That’s ideal, isn’t it? It’s great for you guys, obviously, because you guys can crack on, focusing on the beer, and they can bring great food and that sort of stuff. Happy Day. So what would you say? So let take you out of the brewery. I guess. What would you say your favourite beer destination is.

Joe Atkinson
Bradford

Patrick Whittle
Why is that?

Joe Atkinson
Bradford’s not it’s avoided, like the hype bubble that Leeds and Manchester get throws around there anyway that is accessible, whilst it still kept some absolutely cracking pubs and bars. I mean, they were all totally like, record cafe, corn dollar beer exchange, born fable, fighting cook , yeah, like, there’s loads of them. There’s absolutely not pulling me some as well. But you’ve got everything from, like the old school classic, those that are really modern, like sharp Hillary bar and, like I said, good rate, Chase, escape that hyper bubble and everyone there is just that worth until our little grass. But

Patrick Whittle
is that the same for yourself?

Joe Atkinson
Not much as a basin in Dubai.

Dave Atkinson
I’m a Dales pub. I walk in the Yorkshire Dales quiet pub few pints and bite to eat.

Patrick Whittle
Would you say that way is where your favourite pub is do you have, a favourite pub?

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, yeah, I’d say my favorite pub really, round here is the Turkey in Goose Eye, and that’s in just a hamlet, and it’s just where the brewery originated from, yeah, so it’s always had a connection with Goose Eye, but yeah, just love the pub. It’s just, just a nice village pub. So, yeah, nice walks around it and finishing from a fire. Yeah? Nice pine, the Chinook.

Patrick Whittle
You don’t have to go not a very long journey home.

Dave Atkinson
No no, no, I’m not good travel. Well, I am, if I going on holiday , yeah,

Patrick Whittle
but not, not your day to day, obviously, you to both being brewers, what would you say your sort of favourite item is in the brewery,

Joe Atkinson
In the brewery, following my trust in trusted stirring stick, yeah? Which is just an old broom and it’s got more years of brewing in it than I have and my Grand Dad used it

Patrick Whittle
Passed down, the day it snaps in half will be a sad day.

Joe Atkinson
Yeah, it’s one of them low tech bits of brewing equipment that you couldn’t do without sort of thing. Yeah. What is yours the kettle?

Dave Atkinson
I think it has to be the brew kit. Yeah, I love it. You know, me and my dad brewed on such a basic kit, for so long we’re just, you know, my dad and his his first partner, just made it up out of everything and made him brewed on that for so long and struggled on that for so long. So when I upgraded to this, then, you know, yeah, that’s my favourite

Patrick Whittle
What size is your current brew kit?

Dave Atkinson
20 barrel

Patrick Whittle
When did you get it? Have you had it quite recently?

Dave Atkinson
2017

Patrick Whittle
Okay, yeah okay

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, 20 barrel. Maeschle kit. And it’s a lovely, lovely piece of kit to brew on to be fair. Yeah, I’m out on my cloth, but wiping it all down and polishing it on a Friday,

Patrick Whittle
Yeah it’s nice, it’s big investment you’ve got to take care of it. So when you are brewing do you have any sort of like, favourite music, radio stations, podcasts that you listen to? Or

Joe Atkinson
No you don’t listen. You do. But I do. I might put my headphones on, but it’s very eclectic. Just today we’re country, and tomorrow could be musicals like,

Patrick Whittle
Guess it wants to be sort of high energy stuff. I’d say

Joe Atkinson
No, no, no. Sometimes just want to chill out and concentrate on the brew. But yeah, but yeah, no, not in particular.

Dave Atkinson
Say nothing for me, cause i’m at thatf that age where I’ve got to concentrate, I forget a lot of things

Patrick Whittle
Can’t have like banging rock music or like someone like me, or Maddie talking away on a podcast.

So if you obviously, you guys have had brewing, sort of grown into, if you weren’t in brewing. Do you know what else you’d be doing?

Joe Atkinson
I haven’t got a clue

Dave Atkinson
Before I were a lift engineer, before I come into the brewery with my dad. So whether I’d still be a lift engineer, I don’t know, because I won’t say what my favorite job, but yeah, maybe I’d still be in that.

Patrick Whittle
I guess in some ways, correct me. If I’m wrong, there must be some similarity both physical sort of jobs.

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, probably, it’s physical and everything’s got to be done, right

Patrick Whittle
Yeah, exactly. And I guess you guys will have your set recipes for your core stuff, especially, so you’ve got to be on it, having to make sure, monitoring, making sure the amounts of quantities are correct

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, and we try not to change any raw materials. Stick with the same supplies, as long as the quality is there. Yeah, you stick with them because, you know, you’re not chopping and changing, and you’re not chopping and changing your beers. So, yeah, I thing is you’ve got to be on the ball

Patrick Whittle
Lovely stuff. So I was going ask that, who got you into brewing? I guess that’d be your father and your grand father. Do you have any any other inspirations outside of the family? Or?

Dave Atkinson
No, not really. I mean, obviously we, you know, we’re from Timothy Taylor’s land. So, you know, Timmothy Taylor’s is always in you’ve been brought up by Timothy Talyor’s , really, so, and if I’m honest, when I were young, before I joined my dad, I didn’t know really about any other breweries, apart from Timothy Taylor’s.

Patrick Whittle
Oh, really, have you had a chance to get out the brewery much to many, like beer festivals or many other breweries.

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, I try to go around. I don’t go to many breweries, but, you know, beer festivals I try, I’ve been to quite a few. Don’t go to so many now. It just sort of most places and and when he come into brewery, you know, probably known about more breweries than I did when I came into the brewery, yeah,

Joe Atkinson
A little bit. We were still the same for me. We had a good relationship with Taylor’s, didn’t we? Timothy Taylor;’s , I got to know few lads there and you pick up stuff there. And so they’re a good business to follow, in certain sense, a lot bigger than us. But they have good practices and stuff like that.

Patrick Whittle
So yeah, and that’s really important is this sort of maintain quality of your beer. It’s good. The nice bit about the brewing industry is everyone does talk to each other, and you share the knowledge, because everyone almost wants to help each other out, yeah, even though your competition in some way, you’re sort pf helping each other out.

Dave Atkinson
We do all time, you know, with our neighbors, you know, somebody’s got a cask washer broke, or somebody’s run out some malt, or somebody’s run out some hops, yeah, every now and then there’s always someone on the phone.

Patrick Whittle
definitely. It’s a good, good sort of relationship to have. So outside of brewing, do you have any sort of hobbies or interests, or

Joe Atkinson
Rugby

Dave Atkinson
I suppose Rugby.

Joe Atkinson
Climbing as well

Patrick Whittle
What actually climbing a mountain, or?

Joe Atkinson
Bit lower than that, and we like dog don’t we

Patrick Whittle
So, just a few sort of quick fire questions just to finish. And so what was the last beer you brewed? What have you been brewing today?

Joe Atkinson
Pommies revenge, one of the core recipes. It’s from 1985

Patrick Whittle
A grandad special is it?

Joe Atkinson
Yeah, it was brewed it when Australian lager started flooding the market. So it was an answer back that you can carry on drinking cask ale, so you don’t have to move to them. But it’s one of the earliest, from what I’ve learned online, it’s one of the earliest versions of the golden ale from a micro brewery.

Patrick Whittle
Is that saying you carry on brewing? Do you think? Yeah,

Dave Atkinson
yeah. And it’s brewed all English shops, traditional hops. Yeah, no. So it’s, it’s a good core beer that stuck with us, and, you know, and it’s nice that we’re brewing, you know, with a recipe back from 1980s

Patrick Whittle
Yeah, nice little bit of heritage. Isn’t, yeah, have you changed the recipe at all? Tweets it at all? Or is

Dave Atkinson
it might have had the odd tweak, but not massively,

Patrick Whittle
kept it very much said, I guess, very nice. So what would you say, Fuggles or Golding?

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, Goldings for me

Patrick Whittle
Do you brew it a lot?

Dave Atkinson
Yeah, we use Fuggles and Goldens. I think Goldings for me, that’s just a little bit more mellow.

Patrick Whittle
There we go. So final question, what’s next for you guys in the industry?

Dave Atkinson
Retire, haha, no carry on making the great beer.

Dave Atkinson
We keep thinking that we don’t do any small pack, so we’ll keep thinking about small pack, but it’s more at same. Really, more of the same we’re gonna do.

Joe Atkinson
No grand ambition to get massive and grow.

Dave Atkinson
If we grow, yeah, great

Joe Atkinson
But most of our sales have been organic, yeah

Dave Atkinson
We’re not too bothered about getting big Well, you know, we don’t want to take over the world

Joe Atkinson
Just supply it with great beer.

Patrick Whittle
Very nice. So that concludes our Five Minutes with Faram Segement. So thank you very much, guys