Heard it Through the Hop Bine: What We Discovered on our Trip to Hayle Farm

Last week, Head Brewer Robert took some of our Brew Crew on a very special outing to visit our friends at Hayle Farm, who have provided hops for some of Westerham’s best-loved beers for over two decades. We were given the grand tour by Richard Edmed, a font of knowledge on all things hop-related, and the Brew Crew spent the morning visiting the hop gardens, examining different varieties on the bine, and learning more about exactly what it takes to grow and harvest the perfect hops. Richard and his team certainly know their stuff, having won 40% of the medals at the Wealden Hop Competition in 2025.

The Anatomy of the Hop

Hops are, of course, well known as one of the four key ingredients in beer-making. But here are some other lesser-known facts for the curious among you to sink your teeth into:

• The scientific name for hops is humulus lupulus, part of which comes from lupus, the Latin word for wolf. This is thanks to its tendency to strangle other plants like a wolf does a sheep, as described by Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder way back in the day - charming!
• Hop plants are dioecious – this means that the male and female plants are separate from one another. The hop cones used in the brewing process come exclusively from the female plants.
• In July, the plants flower and their cones start to develop.
• Hop cones are made up of a series of soft tissue petals that form in layers.
• Lupulin glands inside the cones contain oil resins which are key to brewing. They are what gives beer its bitterness and contribute to the aroma and flavour. Bitterness is determined by alpha acid, whilst the volatile oils making up the lupulin contribute to the flavour of the beer.
• Hops are particularly attractive to butterflies (and brewers!)

Weathering the Climate

Over at the family-run Hayle Farm, there are 65 acres of land currently devoted to growing a variety of different hops, and Richard tells us that they hope to expand this to pre-COVID levels, when the hop gardens covered a full 100 acres. The farm is particularly suited to hop growing, being in a valley that shelters the bines from the wind. For further protection, the bines are planted with smaller gaps between the rows than elsewhere, thanks to the UK being notably windier than other hop-growing regions such as Germany. Of course, this summer Richard and his team have also had to contend with scorching temperatures, a more common occurrence these days thanks to the effects of global warming. The farm’s irrigation system is on hand to help keep the hops watered, with two reservoirs and a summer extraction license granting them access to water from the River Teise.

Healthy Hops

Hop farmers spend plenty of their time fending off pests and ensuring their bines remain healthy. Richard’s biggest nemesis on the pest front, he tells us, is the red spider mite, but his hop gardens are also home to a booming population of ladybirds, who are instrumental in keeping the pest population to a minimum.

Like other types of crops, hops are also susceptible to diseases, such as verticillium wilt, a destructive, soil-borne fungal disease that ravaged the hop growing industry back in the 60s and 70s. To combat this, some growers choose to plant varieties known for their resistance to certain diseases, but there are other practices that can be put in place to ensure a healthy crop. To begin the growing process with clean, disease-free hops, Richard buys his pants from a hop propagation farm over in Ipswich, rather than reusing his own plants to repopulate the hop gardens. Ipswich might seem like a world away from Hayle Farm’s idyllic slice of the Kentish countryside, but that is precisely the point. Its distance from the hop gardens of Kent serves as a form of quarantine for the new plants, and this notion is taken so seriously that Richard says visits to the propagation farm are entirely off limits, in case he or any other farmers might bring contaminants with them. The drive to begin with the perfect plant continues back at Hayle Farm, where in winter the old bines are cut off at ground level and burned to remove any possible traces of disease, ready for the new arrivals.

Once the bines are busy growing, they may be sprayed to help keep pests and diseases away. Richard recounts that some of the more archaic practices that farmers used many decades ago – such as spraying plants with concoctions of nicotine or perhaps most shockingly mercury – are so seared into public memory that crop spraying has struggled to shake off its bad reputation. But Richard is pleased to assure us all that you won’t find anything alarming like that going on these days. Tight regulations have led to the development of chemical sprays that are gentler on the environment and safer for use on crops.

From Bine to Bale

Come harvest time in September, Hayle Farm has two mechanical pickers to use – one for the dwarf hop varieties and another for their taller cousins. For the latter, the picker used was built in the 80s and requires a team of thirteen to operate. It cuts the bine down at a set level, which is quite unlike the other cutter used to harvest the dwarf varieties, where the machine goes over the top of the hedge and removes all the leaves instead.

Once harvested, the hops are loaded for drying by hand, a process that produces good results but is labour intensive. Hops contain over 80% moisture when picked and drying them is one of the most important stages of the hop-growing process. To store them successfully, moisture levels must be reduced to around 10%. Historically in Kent, drying took place in specially designed buildings known as oast houses, distinctive, quintessentially Kentish structures that can be seen dotted around the countryside to this day. Richard and his team have recently taken on the hop gardens at the National Trust’s Scotney, which still boasts a functioning oast house that dates from 1873.

After drying, a greater level of automation comes into play at Hayle Farm, with moving floors that feed the hops along a production line to be baled. The packaged hops are then transferred to Richard’s cold store – an important stop on the Brew Crew’s tour as a reprieve from the intensity of the sun that day, thanks to the cool 4°C maintained inside to keep the hops fresh and ready for delivery to breweries like ours.

A Memorable Visit

We’d like to say a big thank you to Richard for taking the time to show us around – on one of the hottest days of the year, no less – and making our visit a truly fascinating way to spend a morning away from the brewery. He even says we can pop back in September and see how the hop harvest is coming along, and quite frankly, we can’t wait!