Brewer’s Envy

It’s early on a sunny autumnal morning as lead brewer Tom Scrancher revs up Moor Beer’s slightly battered van and heads up the M5 to pick up a very special delivery from Claston Farm in Dormington, just outside Hereford.

Pretty countryside rushes by, green with the last flush of summer, a few fields left bald and stubbly from being harvested but others brimming with crops. Signs along the road signal fresh apples and ripe plums, and soon the view over the hedgerows is no longer of cider orchards, but of fields of tall green hops.

Today is a special day. Tom is picking up 100kg of fresh hops straight from the farm, and whizzing them back to the Moor brewery in St Philips, to turn them into Envy, a beer so named for its vegetal notes and greenish tint, created by the sheer volume of hops.

It’s a brew that happens only once a year, and it’s clear that the team at Moor are excited.

Hops growing in the Herefordshire fields

“The hops are the First Gold variety,” Tom says. He’s been brewing at Moor for almost eight years, having met owner Justin Hawke when running his local pub.

“Once the hops are picked off the bines, we have to use them within 24 hours,” Tom continues. “So today, we’ll get the hops, do the brewing and drink some beer.”

Pulling into the quiet farm, a man in blue overalls motions for Tom to wind down the window. “You’ll be lookin’ for some ‘ops!” he says with a brilliant grin and an even better accent.

Tom’s hops are already baled up in orange string bags by the door of the huge blue corrugated metal shed. The smell is overwhelming as hop dryer Andrew Watkins rolls the door back – an intense, sweetish fragrance that sits somewhere between vegetation and flowers.

Two people work on a huge green machine that stretches floor to ceiling, funneling the hops from the top floor and along a conveyor belt,  and then down a steep chute so they can be bagged.

Andrew, dressed in ancient corduroys and a thick woolen jumper, leads the way up to the top level, where a carpet of hops at least a metre deep runs the length of the building – an Olympic swimming pool of soft and fragrant vegetation.

The hops are dried out before being baled

The hops are small pale green flowerheads, the size of little Brussels sprouts, and they lie closely packed together in their temporary beds, having been picked just a few hours ago.

The room rattles with the noise of the conveyor belt, bringing an endless supply of new hops in, around and down into the beds. As one section fills, the belt shifts along a notch to start filling the next.

Tom reverses the van close and loads up the cargo, and then Andrew offers to gives him a tour. “Worked with hops all my life, so far,” he deadpans as he walks around the side of the shed. “My father done it, my grandfather done it.”

Andrew and Tom load the bales of hops

One of the bales of fresh hops

Outside, the conveyor moves the hops high above the gap between one shed and the next, a fine mist of pale confetti drifting down into the muddy gravel. An open door reveals a drift of pillowy hops a storey high, and then in the last shed are the people: an upended tractor trailer towers at the very end of the conveyor belt, and workers pull the hops onto it, still on the bines.

As the vegetation is moved through the space on the belt, doubling back several times, it is stripped and refined by more and more busy hands, until just the pale hops are left.

Tour complete, it’s back in the van to take the hops to Bristol. Ahead, a tractor pulls out of the yard, little hops clinging to the sides of the trailer, ready to be filled again with the next round of harvesting.

The hops come in fresh from the fields

“Hops add flavour and aroma,” Tom says as he drives south. “They used to be included for their antibacterial properties. Back in the days of Indian pale ale, when we shipped beer to the colonies, brewers would put hops in and the higher alcohol content would preserve the beer and it would survive the journey.

“Now, it’s all for the taste. You can make a type of beer without hops – gruits – with herbs instead. But the hops impart bitterness for a balance between the sweet and the bitter, otherwise it can get too much, too sweet.

“When you use fresh hops you need a lot more, ten times as many as when you use dried, as you don’t get as much beer out of them. With fresh hops, the flavour profile you get is very different. It makes for an interesting brew day. We try to do it every year with this particular recipe.”

Moor Beer founder Justin Hawke explains the brewing process

Rolling back into Moor HQ on Days Road near Temple Meads, the hops are unloaded and the tap room begins to fill with invited guests from local and not-so-local pubs and bars, here to learn about the brew and lend a hand. Tom disappears into the brewery and Justin Hawke, owner and head brewer at Moor, takes charge, gathering the troops and leading everyone through into the brewery with its towering metal vats.

“Using fresh hops is a pain in the butt and a labour of love, but we love it,” he tells the crowd with a grin, thanking them for coming to ‘Envy Day’. From under his short-sleved Moor Beer t-shirt, a large tattoo showing hops on the bine is visible, snaking down his left elbow and forearm.

“There is only one day a year that we can make this beer. We can literally only do it today. Because the hops haven’t been heated, the flavours are quite delicate and the beer come out tasting more like a lager. It gives the beer a fresh character that you can’t get at any other time of the year.

“I don’t like doing wanky beers because I don’t like drinking wanky beers,” Justin continues, and the assembled beer aficionados titter and nod. “You should still be able to drink six pints of it. Rresponsibly,” he quickly adds. “That’s our motto.”

The first bag of hops is taken up the to the vast steel brewing vat

The bags of hops are wheeled out and people from each pub and bar are invited to grab a bag and ascend the steep metal stairs to the top of the biggest vats and pour in the hops. A few fall to the floor and people pick them up, intrigued, sniffing them for their bright aroma and clutching them like tiny bouquets of flowers.

The hops cause a stir with the assembled crowd

Under Justin’s watchful eye, the empty vat gradually fills with a mountain of pale green hops – the first stage of the brewing process that will take a couple of weeks.

Once Envy is ready, it’s best drunk soon. “Because you’re adding a lot more vegetal matter to the beer, it makes the beer taste a little grassier, a little bit more green and fresh,” Justin says. “That’s a very transient effect, so the beer should really be drunk fresh to really appreciate it. Envy has a green, fresh character that you just can’t get out of hops that have been dried.”

Pouring in the hops gets the brew process started

For Justin, hops aren’t just an ingredient – they are a passion, as is the whole brewing process. “First of all, I have a massive love for beer on its own,” he says. “Then there’s also a sense of wanting to create something, and giving birth to something. It gives you a sense of satisfaction. On the surface, there’s nothing exciting about brewing, unless you’re in the right mindset, you could say it’s boring or repetitive, and there’s not much to actually do except clean and prepare things. You’ve got to really enjoy what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, otherwise you could be doing any job.

“I just love hops, and the way they make me feel,” he continues. “There’s something about them. They’re refreshing, they’re crisp, they’re clean, they’re aromatic. They remind me of good times and feeling good. First Gold, the hop variety we’ve used today, to me is fresh and British. And that’s what we want in Envy.”

Invited guests at the 2017 Envy Day all helped make the beer

As Envy Day draws to a close, guests trickle out into the tap room garden to drink a refreshing pint and chat in the sunshine and Justin points out a certificate on the wall. The certificate commemorates Moor’s involvement since 2012 on a programme with a group of hop researchers, through which they have helped to create a new hop variety called Jester.

“Of all the programmes that have been done, it’s the only one, I would say, that has been really successful and captured people’s imaginations,” Justin says. “We’ve helped to develop a hop that is good enough to compete with the best in the world.

“The British hop industry was dying – literally dying – so to be able to invigorate it again is very rewarding.”

Moor Beer‘s Envy brew will be unveiled at Bristol Beer Week, and available to drink from the Moor Beer tap room from October 14.