There’s quite a bit of catching up to do following our recent
voyage into the Atlantic ocean, although this current post might, if I pitch it
correctly, cover a lot of ground. Depending on how it turns out we might find
one post seamlessly leading straight into another, although there’s no
guaranteed as to how things turn out. We shall have to wait and see, but in the
meantime let’s kick off with a visit to Tonbridge’s premier alehouse, the
Nelson Arms. I called in, sometime after 2pm on Sunday, ostensibly in
search of Harvey’s November 5th offering, Bonfire Boy. It turned out
I was a session too late, and unsurprisingly this seasonal offering, had sold
out. Plan B was to try the Green Hop beer from Gun Brewery, alongside the
Porter, from Kent Brewery.
Somewhat uncharacteristically, I ordered a half of
each beer, rather than a pint, but in the case of the latter offering, I was
glad that I did, as I’m sorry to report that it was one of the worst beers I
have ever tasted. It wasn’t off, cloudy, or on the turn, but it was unbalanced,
and dominated by a very astringent aftertaste, that was quite unpalatable and really
unpleasant. I couldn’t even force myself to drink it, but with no
suitable plant pots to pour the unwanted beer into, I handed it back to the barman
and asked him to tip it away. It’s very unusual for me not to be able to finish
a beer, but there was no point in struggling with a beer I couldn’t stomach.
I must admit, I’ve never been a fan of Kent Brewery beers,
but as they keep cropping up, particularly in the Nelson, I was starting to think,
up until this incident, that it was me who was at fault, rather than the
brewery. My replacement was a half pint of QPA, a session pale ale from
Quantock Brewery. This beer was perfectly acceptable, as was the Green Hop Pale
from Gun Brewery.
The latter was the first Green Hop beer I’ve sampled so far
this year, and this brings me on to the second thread of this post, namely from
being everywhere one looked, 10 years ago, to being both rare and hard to find,
in 2025. It’s probably no exaggeration to say that in these straightened times,
an increasing number of breweries are finding them too difficult to brew –
given the time restraints associated with GHA’s, and the lack of appreciation
from the drinking public who never really got the point of them. Consequently,
apart from in specialised outlets, these seasonal beers are increasingly
difficult to come across.
How things have changed for Green Hop Ales since I first
wrote about them in 2015, detailing exactly what they are, and what it is about
them that makes them so unique. The
general public (but not readers of this, or other beer blogs), often wrongly
believe that beer is brewed from hops whereas, as most of us know, beer is brewed
from malted barley (sometimes with the addition of other cereals), with hops
providing the “seasoning”. Hops impart tanginess, bitterness plus aroma, and they
also act as a preservative in the finished product. That’s cleared up that
urban myth, so now onto the more important stuff, such as the difference between
normal and green hop beers.
Hops are normally dried, prior to being used in brewing, in
order to preserve their important flavouring characteristics, and to ensure the
harvested crop lasts throughout the year. Green Hop Beer though, is made
with fresh, or “green”, hops that are used as soon as possible after harvesting
and ideally within 12 hours of being picked. The resulting beers have a
characteristic fresh taste because the green hops used contain oils and other
aroma compounds that are normally lost when hops are dried.
The very first Green
Hop Ales (GHA’s), were of necessity experimental, as no one really knew how
many hops needed to be added at the start of the brewing process, or how the
finished product would turn out. Contrast this with normal dried hops where, from
experience gained over many years, the brewer knows the correct weight of hops
to be added to each brew, in order to achieve the desired result and a
consistent end product.
Many of the original GHA’s were unbalanced and, to
put it mildly, rather over-hopped! I remember some of these beers possessing a rich resinous taste, alongside an
almost oily texture, which often meant you could actually feel the hops oils
coating your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Over the years, brewers began
making compensation for the resinous feel of their GHA’s, and if you
take a look back at the many posts about Green Hop beers that I wrote over the years,
you can almost feel these beers becoming less and less astringent, oily and
overly bitter.
The inevitable result has been GHA’s that taste less
and less like something special, and more and more mainstream. This was
certainly my feeling when I knocked back that glass of Gun Green Hop Pale, and
I believe it is the experience of many other beer drinkers who once raved over GHA’s
but now view them as no different from “normal” beers. It’s almost as if the pendulum
has moved full-swing, and has now, become an increasingly meaningless marketing
exercise, along the lines of Beaujolais Nouveau. I imagine that brewers, and hop growers up and down the
county, will be relieved at not being tied into the tight timetable that
governs the production of green hop beers; a schedule that is constrained by
having to keep their brewing operations on stand-by, whilst waiting for that
phone call from the hop grower that says, “We’re harvesting, tomorrow.”
It was fun whilst it lasted, and those mid-September train
rides over to Canterbury, sampling a range of mainly Kent GHA’s, in the warm,
early autumn sunshine of the city’s Dane John Gardens, are now just a distant
memory. If further proof was needed that the whole Green Hop thing has turned
full circle, the Kent Green Hop Festival is no longer the countywide event that
it was 10, or even 5 years ago. Instead, it has morphed into a series of local events,
hosted either by the brewers themselves or, more usually, those pubs still
banging the gong for GHA’s.
The final part of that mythical thread I was talking about at
the beginning of this piece, concerns Untappd, and the fact that put simply, this beer ticking App does not lie. How do I know this? Well, the three beers that I sampled at the Nelson last Sunday were all beers that I’d sampled previously. This was despite
me thinking they were new ones. I found this out when I attempted to score them
on Untappd, only to find that I’d ticked them before. That includes Kent
Brewery Porter, which I awarded a reasonable score of 3.75. Perhaps something went
wrong with the latest brew, or perhaps I was just having an off day, but with reasonable
scores for the other two beers I enjoyed that day, I suspect not.
As for the Nelson itself,
the pub was doing a healthy trade in Sunday lunches, and it wasn’t until one group
of diners left that I was able to get a seat. Good news then, and proof if your
offering is good, people will keep coming back for more, but to really satisfy
me, how about another cask of Harvey’s Bonfire Boy, or, in a few weeks’ time, a
cask of the brewery’s legendary Christmas Ale.
