BBC Country File highlights growth in interest & demand for British hops
Many of the hops used to make beer in Britain come from the US and Australia and New Zealand. These give the more vibrant hop forward tastes to beer that is growing in popularity particularly in the craft beer sector.
Many people who read my blog will be fully aware of this.
However there is a resurgence of interest in and the growing of British hops. Not just new variants of old standards like Fuggles and Golding but entirely new hop varieties.
On Sunday Country File on BBC1 focused on this. It looked at hop growing in a large, and mostly new, hop farm in Bromyard, Herefordshire. It looked how hop picking takes place in 2021 and the battle to keep hops disease free.
The programme also interviewed a surviving hop picker (mechanisation had taken over by 1960) and discussed new hop varieties and the kind of beer they could produce.
The coverage is split up through the programme at (roughly) the start, 16 mins, 37 mins and 52 mins
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000zx0r/countryfile-bromyard-hops
Given it was show on BBC1 the audience is likely to have been far larger than discussion of such matters usually reaches.
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