MORE than 337kg of high-quality wet hops were picked from 300 plants on a hectare hop field block at the Van Dieman Brewing family farm near Evandale.
Van Dieman Brewing’s founder and head brewer Will Tatchell said it has been a cracking year.
“It’s been like grapes with quality of hops well up but yield down, but the quality was through the roof and that’s what counts. I think they are the best quality hops we’ve had in 10 years,” Mr Tatchell said.
“We had a brilliant spring, a phenomenal growing season.”
More than 100 people gathered on the Van Dieman Brewing farm to help with the harvest.
“It was fantastic turnout of family and friends. We had heaps of sausages and we ran out of them.
“A huge thank you to each person who took the time to come out to the brewery on for our annual hop harvest.
“I am brewing now with a large chunk of the hops harvested at the weekend, and the aromas are off the charts. I just hope I can do justice in transferring these pungent aromas into our latest Harvest beer.”
Mr Tatchell said he’s not sure any other brewery in the world makes a beer quite so fresh with malt still warm malt from the kiln.
“However, the rewards are incredible,” he said.
Van Dieman Brewing is a single origin beer brewer combining the passion of agriculture, with the artisanship of fermentation.
Produce used in the beers is grown and sourced on the family farm.