It’s harvest time for hops! We’ve known that the Lea Valley is a rich hopping ground for a long time and we’ve wanted to make a green hop beer with local hops for just as long – after all, our Limited Edition Hopped Gin is flavoured with self-seeded hops from Walthamstow, just the other side of the river from the Beerblefish Brewhouse.
However, we weren’t expecting the lovely surprise we got this week when we discovered that the wild (or at least self-seeded) hop plants growing up the gates to the industrial estate where we’re based had borne fruit, and was laden with beautiful cones ripe for the picking.
We had previously agreed with the landlord and the neighbouring industrial estate that we could pick and use any hops that grew – we’ve seen several hop plants in the neighbourhood over the four and a half years that we’ve been here, but none of them have ever produced cones before.
As with our gin hops, we have no definitive idea what variety these are – there are two plants and, from the hint of mint, we think one of them might be a Fuggles variety. The other has a slight lemony aroma, but that doesn’t narrow it down massively given the myriad citrusy hop varieties.
The hop plants are less than 50 metres from the brewery door, so we picked them and then ran them straight into the freezer to preserve all their hoppy goodness, ready for Michaela to brew them into a green hop beer. Keep an eye out for our green hop brew over the coming weeks!
