Hop harvest: Hopping mad

Brian Yorton, head brewer at Wadworths, is without doubt sane and is carrying on the tradition of creating the well-regarded green-hopped 4.5 per cent beer that was started in 1992 by his predecessor Trevor Holmes. It is believed to be the first of its type to be produced in the UK.

"Trevor liked hop farms and wondered what it would be like to make a green hop brew," he explains. "They were originally used in all parts of the process but it was overpowering, so the recipe was changed the year after to use dried hops plus a bit of green," he says.

Because the hops are used immediately after picking, Yorton says there is insufficient time to analyse them for their alpha content (bitterness): "It's the one beer I brew where I don't know what it will be like". This randomness meant last year's beer had 50 per cent more bitterness than the previous year's.

While the taste of the final product might be unknown, the path to its creation - involving the Malt & Hops run - is well-trodden and roughly replicates that of each of the previous 18 years.

This year, September 2 was the big day. It started as ever with the Wadworths van pulling up at Newham Farm in Worcestershire at 6:45am to collect a mix of dried and green hops. Wadworths has dealt with Newham Farm, and its sister company, hop merchants Lupofresh, since it came into the hands of co-owners Ian Ibbotson and Ernst Krakenberger in 1994. When they acquired the farm, the pair immediately added 120 more acres to the existing 50.

Ibbotson says the majority of the crop is made up of the aroma hop varieties fuggles and goldings. For Malt & Hops 2010 the 'early choice' variant of fuggles is picked as it is ready at this early stage of the tight three-to-four-week hop-picking window that began this year on August 31.

From 6am, the team of 23, headed by Richard Powell, farm manager at Newham Farm, begin picking. "The picking principle has not changed," says Powell.

"The whole bine from three feet above the soil is cut down and loaded onto a trailer. It is then taken away quickly. We have a pick-to-kiln time of 20 minutes, as this gives more consistency of the product for the brewer."

But before hitting the kilns, the hops are taken to the picking shed where a hefty US-made picking machine receives the bines, which have been suspended upside down. The important elements, the hop cones, are split off the bine by dangerous-looking spinning cylinders and the leaves removed through a three-stage cleaning process. Each batch of hops is then laid 18 inches deep on top of what looks like the biggest gas-powered barbecue imaginable. These are the kilns. "It takes eight hours and starts at 50 degrees C, building up to 60 degrees C. Afterwards we feel the crop for its moisture content as we have a maximum tolerance of 11 per cent water," explains Powell.

The objective is to take the moisture content of the hops down from their natural level of 60/70 per cent to nearer 10 per cent. The newly dried hops are turned out from the kilns and left to rest for eight hours to enable them to attain a consistent level of moisture across each batch.

Rested hops from the previous day are used for the Malt & Hops brew and are bagged into 61kg sacks that require a pressure machine to give six to eight presses to cram in the correct quantity of hops.

Such is the nature of a crop reliant on weather for its quality that the values of these bags can vary dramatically. Krakenberger recalls the grim days of 1984-6 when a sack was worth a mere £15 compared with the heady days of 2008 when the value was around £1,200.

Two of the sacks of dried hops are then thrown into the Wadworths van alongside seven bags of straight-off-the-bine green hops. And it's then on to the brewery in Devizes, where it's all go in the cramped 125-year-old brew house.

Yorton explains how this part of the building only comes fully alive this one day each year as Malt & Hops is the only beer now brewed in the brewery's two old coppers (one in situ since day one and the other added in 1945) and the ageing hop back.

The reason for using the old equipment is not sentimentality but the fact the new plant, introduced only last year with its whirlpool technology, cannot handle the dried hops (preferring instead hop pellets).

The difference between the two parts of the building is immense - one cool, gleaming and all rather sterile, the other noisy, hot and much more reminiscent of a less health and safety-conscious bygone age.

By the time the van has returned to the brewery, the 8:15am mash - involving bringing 6,500kg of malt to the boil to create the 'wort' - is well under way. Following a quick weighing of the Newham Farm hops into 340lb of green hops and 164lb of dried on the brewery's original scales, the dried batch is put in the bottom of the old coppers and the green hops carefully spread on the plates of the hop back.

"The green hops enable us to keep as much of the oil and resin as possible from the hop in the brew. It is a subtlety aspect of the beer," says Yorton. This is infused into the boiled wort, which is run off from the coppers into the hop back, for a brief 15 minutes before being pumped up to the top of the Victorian brew house.

Yorton explains that at this stage the liquid is still described as wort. But once cooled, through a heat-exchanger, and the yeast added, it can officially be classified as Malt & Hops beer. A cheeky tasting of the beer at this stage exposes little of its final characteristics or, crucially, its bitterness content.

Before this can be revealed the beer is slowly passed into three 65-barrel fermenting vessels (from the brewery's total of 27) in a leisurely process that will take until 4pm. Fermentation will be finished over the weekend, the beer cooled down and two vessels'-worth then put into casks one week later. Another week after, following maturing and filtering, the other vessel's contents will then be bottled.

There is no doubt that the whole Malt & Hop exercise - from the 6am picking to the firing up of the old coppers - adds to the workload at Wadworth, but for Yorton this is what makes life as a brewer interesting and helps differentiate the brewery's range.

What will make it even more interesting is if the first customers to try this year's vintage - at the company's 250 pubs - on September 16 enjoy it. But if the fresh hops do provide a little too much bitterness for some people, as was the case last year, then Yorton and his team will have to wait a full 12 months to try again.