Better late than never.

Starting up the blog again after a busy time. Following are some posts of the most interesting things I worked on during the last 6 months.

HEREFORD HOP HARVEST

Something I have always wanted to investigate and tell the story of photographically is the Hop Harvests in early September. My Dad is hot stuff in the hop world - working on amazing new varieties as well as tackling diseases and teaching farmers how to treat this pernickety, vulnerable and hugely variable plant, so we have always been knee deep in hops as a family. The aromatic smell of hop oils pervading everything for a good portion of the year, hot summers in hop drying kilns, days of farm tours bouncing around on trailers and the overwhelming noise of picking sheds are all deep nostalgic memories for me and my sisters.

With ‘I’m Peter Glendinning’s Son’ as my casual access pass, I took a week to photograph the stages of harvesting and processing of tall and dwarf hops in the Wye Valley in Herefordshire, in the fields of my childhood surrounding the family home.

1 Pridewood Talls

Tall hop bines are pulled down by hand by cheery Czech seasonal workers, fed into the cleaning machine which sorts the delicate cones from the leaves and bines. After being checked at the other end by hand again, automatic conveyer belts replace the traditional ‘sweaty-men-stripped-to-waist+wooden-shovels’ in laying out the hops to be dried in huge warm beds. When their moisture content is perfect they are released to be compressed into bales, sold to brewers via hop merchants.

2 Poolend Dwarfs

Dwarf hops are grown on shorter trellises of 8 foot and harvested by a proprietary picking machine which straddles the rows, slowly working their way up and down a field and conveying the harvest to a continual stream of trailers which rush back to the picking sheds.

3 Townend Farm Cleaning Sheds

Dwarf hops are sorted en mass as the bine is already stripped by the harvester. Vibration, fall rate and conveyor belts separate the waste from the cones for removal. The hops are again dried by automatic machines overlooked by watchful eyes. Hop kilns are notorious as sources of fires that can reduce much of a harvest to ash…

4 Peter Glendinning

Hop breeding produces multitudes of new varieties. These are selected for trials, watched throughout the year for character, cone density, resistance to many diseases and weather fluctuations, yield… the list of variables is monstrous and generates enormous spreadsheets which frequently adorn our kitchen table for study. They are picked by hand and tested, guesses are made as to the potential for brewing based on smelling the strong, aromatic oils. The unique blend which defines each variety has a huge influence on the potential taste of a beer, though first it has to be brewed in small breweries by master craftsmen.

Master craftsmen is an apt label. The complex processes of breeding, selecting, growing, safeguarding, harvesting and brewing are undertaken by people with exceptional practical knowledge and skill. Although their are many attempts to be scientific about it, the successful process remains an art form undertaken by experts with perfect judgement.

5 Dormington Trial Nursery

While hop varieties can easily all look the same, their diversity is startling up close and not limited to the physical variation seen in the trial nursery at Dormington, tended by Peter and continually inspected and tested against every plausible classification, all in the search of ever better beer.