New Zealand hops have a well deserved international reputation, and each year our harvest draws brewers from all over the globe. It’s a star-studded cast of some of the world’s best brewers, and there’s a definite tingle of pride in getting to share the NZ harvest experience with them.
One of my highlights is taking visiting brewers out to the Nelson Lakes hops farm. It’s two hours drive from the hop fields of Nelson, including half an hour on a long gravel road down the Tūtaki Valley. Just when you’ve almost given up hope of there ever being any hops at the end of the drive, you pop out of the ancient beech forest and there it is, on the river plane where the Tūtaki and Mātakitaki rivers meet, surrounded by forest-clad snow-capped mountains, what must be one of the world's most spectacular hop farms. Even thick clouds of sandflies can’t take away the magic of this spot.
Another harvest treat is introducing visiting brewers to new varieties from the Hāpi breeding programme at the Freestyle Hops farm. Each year, Jo, the breeder on the Hāpi Research team, grows up to 3000 brand new hop plants, each one unique. It’s a mind-blowing candy shop of crazy new hop aromas. I love walking the field with visiting brewers and rubbing cones fresh from the bine, knowing that we’re probably the first people to ever smell that hop. There are, of course, duds, hops that just smell grassy. Then there are weird ones (anyone for cumin and soy sauce hops? True). But every so often you’ll find a hop that blows you away.
Each year, out of this field, we’ll shortlist about 300, then carry out intensive sensory work to whittle this number down to 20 unicorns which will be planted out the following year for brewing trials.
It’s then a painfully slow process, growing one single plant up to a commercial scale, all the while checking that it is living up to its promised agronomic and brewing potential. Find the world's most exciting new hop and you’ll be lucky to have enough to do proper full scale brewing trials after 5 years!
Which makes it all the more exciting that this harvest delivered usable volumes of not one, but three of these new varieties! Enough to showcase each of them in our Hāpi Sessions collaborations this year! You know the drill, three harvest collabs with breweries at the top of their game, creating a New Zealand-hopped riff on a signature hop-forward style or brew that’s made the brewery famous.
This year we’re brewing with some of the best.
Manchester’s masters of hoppiness, Track, join us for Many Moons, a session-strength hazy pale brewed with new hop variety NZ02, Peacharine and Rakau promising passionfruit icing, sweet orange and sun-ripened stone fruit.
Then San Francisco’s legends of lupulin, Cellarmaker, give us an Interstellar Burst of hop forward flavour, with new variety NZ05, Southern Cross, Peacharine and Mosaic, delivering massive luscious tropical fruit aromatics and crisp, clean, punchy bitterness.
Then finally, Poland’s craft beer pioneers Pinta present See you on the Flipside, an unapologetically old school West Coast IPA with a contemporary twist courtesy of new Hāpi Research variety NZ17 with Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka, offering bold bitterness, punchy white grapefruit, mango, passionfruit and lime, all with a subtle sativa twist.
Brewing great beers, with awesome brewers, using brand new hop varieties, could it get any better? It’s the sweet hoppy icing on the perfect harvest cake. Who needs Christmas?