Fresh Hops - ALL YEAR ROUND!

With the Australian hop harvest nearing completion, and the bounty of glorious wet hop beers now being enjoyed across the country, we’re proud to announce a project we’ve been working on that will allow this ongoing enjoyment over the course of the entire year - Fresh Hops all year round.

Trial plants emerging - 2016

Along with a number of pioneering agricultural methods we’ve adopted over the past few years, fresh hops available all year round is a project we’ve been tinkering with for around 2 years. It started as a challenge from another prominent brewer to produce an out of season hop plant (a challenge we happily accepted) and from there grew into the realisation that we could pull this off for commercial development.

Initial trial plants growing with success - 2016

From a small pilot scheme, consisting of only 2 plants initially, we’re now in the position of having 100 commercial plants now emerging from their hydroponically managed pots and we expect full harvest in September - with a subsequent out-of-season Wet Hop brew to come shortly after. Our aim is to manage the hops so that we’re able to brew with increasingly fresh hop flowers over the course of the brewing year by staggering maturing times of the plants to always ensure we have fresh hop flowers on hand.

In order to achieve this, the hop rhizomes need to be coaxed into a dormancy period in an controlled cold environment for a specific period of time before being fed a precise diet of hydroponically delivered nutrients and water in a purpose designed, climate controlled hot house - at the brewery.

April 2018 hop plant emerging from hydroponic seedling containers

It’s rewarding to have achieved what we’ve done so far, and excited to announce the Wet Hop brew for September 2018, but there’s plenty of work to go in between. As there will be limited quantities, were requesting anyone interested in the September we hop brew contact us immediately in order to ensure supply of the worlds first out-of-season Wet Hop beer.

July 2017 pilot crop

Please email will@vandiemanbrewing.com.au to register interest or for further information.