Hop harvest is better than Christmas. Fact.
Maybe I’m biased. Like most brewers, I have an otaku-level obsession with hops. For true resin heads, harvest is the ultimate pilgrimage; a fully immersive, sensory celebration of hops. For those lucky enough to be at harvest, the whole month of March is saturated in hop aroma. Stay close enough to one of the farms and you literally wake up and go to sleep to the smell of hops. Walking the fields, surrounded by bines laden with aromatic resin filled cones, is intoxicating.
Then there’s the excitement and energy of the harvest itself, as farmers frantically try to pick and dry hops at the peak of their ripeness. There's real life drama to this, with farmers constantly checking each field to see which hops can hold on and which ones need to be picked. Pick too early and hops won’t deliver that promised aroma, too late and whole fields can be lost.
Back in the day, when I brewed in England, we’d go out to the hop fields of Kent and select lots. It was a magic process. Each lot of dried whole cone would be delivered to the selection table wrapped in a perfect origami cube of purple paper, held shut with a brass pin. We’d pop them open and rummage through the contents, inspecting the cones and rubbing them to release the aroma before picking our favourites.
But later, when I brewed in Australia, this connection was lost. Anonymous silver bags of hops would arrive and we’d brew with them. Sometimes they’d be good, sometimes not, but without context and understanding of where they had come from I felt something was missing.
Making this connection again with farmers here in New Zealand has been one of the coolest parts of the Garage Project journey. Learning about where your ingredients come from, getting to know the people involved and the process that goes into producing them makes the experience of brewing infinitely richer and more fulfilling.
It also makes our beer better. Spending time at harvest, learning about the nuances of each different hop variety and finding those magic lots means we have better hops to draw on for the rest of the year.
It’s a two-way process too. Farmers also get to know what brewers like, and in turn produce more of the hops we want to brew with (and you like to drink). Everyone’s a winner.
We work really closely with Nelson Lakes and Freestyle Hops, as well as excellent hop growers around the country, to keep this connection to the ingredients and the land that grows them at the very center of our brewing. And it doesn’t get much closer than the once-a-year opportunity to brew wet hop beers.
Get amongst it.