Green Hop Season Arrives

As the summer months fade into vibrant autumn, with its crisp mornings and golden sunshine, a special time arrives for brewers and beer lovers alike. While Oktoberfest may be just around the corner, many brewers in Kent, including ourselves, are also celebrating the arrival of Green Hop Beer Season.

This brief but exciting season allows us to collect freshly harvested hops from our local farms and rush them to our breweries to create fresh, aromatic beers. In this post, we’ll take you through our process — starting with the harvest at Hukins Hops Farm and ending with the creation of our limited, seasonal batch of green hop beer at our brewery in Tunbridge Wells.

What is Green Hop Season?

Green hop season marks the annual hop harvest, which usually falls around late summer to early autumn. This year, we harvested our hops in the second week of September. Unlike dried hops used throughout the year, fresh hops are harvested and brewed immediately, resulting in beers with unique, vibrant flavours and aromas.

Our head brewer, Paul, explains it best:

“A green hop beer is made with hops straight from the bine, rather than dried or pelleted versions. To qualify as a green hop beer, they must be Kent hops, and they have to be in the kettle within 12 hours of picking.“

Paul, Fonthill Brewing Co.

But what exactly makes green hop beers so special?

We source our Kentish hops from Hukins Hops, who have been growing hops in the Weald of Kent for over 100 years. We spoke with Glenn from Hukins Hops, who explained:

“Using fresh green hops straight from the hop garden gives brewers the chance to create a special, one-off beer that incorporates the hop-growing culture embedded in Kent’s history.”

Glenn continues:

“Adding green hops to the boil during the brewing process allows brewers to access hop oils that are only obtainable during the harvest months — before they are dried in the oast and the more perishable oils are burnt off and lost in the process.”

Glenn, Hukins Hops

From Farm to Pint

Once the hops are harvested at Hukins, they’re immediately delivered to our brewery in Tunbridge Wells. There, our head brewer Paul starts the brewing process, creating a limited small batch of green hop beer.

“This year, Hukins picked Challenger hops for us. The hops went from the bine to the kettle in about three hours.”

Paul, Fonthill Brewing Co.

Glenn elaborates on what makes Challenger hops special:

“Challenger provides a spicy, cedar, green tea aroma with sweet floral flavour notes. As a bittering hop, it provides a refreshing, full-bodied rounded bitterness, and as a late hop, it gives a very crisp and fruity character.”

But green hop beers are special in that they’re not just a reflection of the hop variety — they also capture the environment they’re grown and harvested in. Factors like the type and condition of the soil, weather conditions, and even the specific day the hops are picked, all contribute to subtle variations in each year’s batch.

After boiling and then whirl-pooling, the beer is cooled and transferred to the fermenter, where it will remain for about seven days before being moved to casks and placed in the conditioning room for another two weeks.

This means the first pint will be ready to pour at the beginning of October — just in time to enjoy alongside the crisp autumn air!

Celebrating Green Hop Season

When you drink a green hop beer, you get to taste a moment in time — a culmination of a year’s work at the farm, followed by the swift, careful brewing process that preserves those special, fresh flavours.

As you might expect, green hop beers are brewed in limited quantities each year. They are a fleeting but truly rewarding treat, and we can’t wait to share ours with you. We hope you’ll join us this autumn in celebrating this year’s hop harvest with a pint of Fonthill’s own green hop beer!

And remember, once the last drop is poured, you’ll have to wait another year to enjoy the next pint of green hop beer.