Deal Hop Farm : Can you help name Deal Hop Farm’s first beer?

Can you help name Deal Hop Farm’s first beer?

After discussions with our partners at Ripple Steam Brewery we have agreed what the brew may look like in September.

They will be brewing a Green Hop Beer using our hops and wish to badge it as a ‘Deal Hop Farm’ product with its own name.

Green Hop Beer uses freshly harvested cone straight from the garden without going through a drying process. The green hops would be used for bittering but mainly adding flavour to the beer. There needs be about 25kilos for these processes.

The precise brewing arrangements are dependent on the quantity and quality of our crop in September, which we will not really know until the harvest day.

We have agreed with them what the different scenarios for the harvest may look like from a bumper harvest of 25kilos to a nuclear winter of a summer with only 1kilo.

In the latter worst-case scenario, there is a respected brewing technique known as ‘Dry Hopping’ where a small amount of hops are added at the fermentation stage to super-charge the flavour.

The intention is produce:

a) 155 cases of Bottled beer (case of 12 x 500ml). This will have a bespoke ‘Deal Hop Farm’ label with the new name and Ripple Steam branding. This will be available in the first instance only to members. The cost of case will be discounted to members. At present we don’t know the final price (this is effected by the labelling costs etc)

b) Plus about 17 casks of badged beer for local pubs and our own celebration/tasting in October.

We recognise that this a real & welcomed commitment by the Brewery to our project. It shows a great deal of confidence in how our community farm is progressing.

The final decision & details will need to remain with the Brewery as they are taking the commercial risk & need to protect their brand.

Ripple Steam have asked us to come up with a name for the beer and a design for the bottle label by June.

At the Organisation meeting on Thursday we all agreed that this is one for all the members of the Farm.

So we will be running a competition for naming the beer with the winning entry receiving a few bottles of local beer:

· Start Date 21st April

· Final Date for entries 21st May, Noon

· One entry per Garden

· All entries by email to Info@dealhopfarm.org.uk

· If the same name is entered more than once - only the first entry will be considered (we will let you know so you can put another one in, if you are the second one etc)

· We will post a current ‘runners+riders’ list on facebook and the website as we get going.

· We plan to run another electronic survey on how the plants are growing from the 24th May and we will use that means for capturing your votes.

· Voting will finish at noon on the 31st May

· We will discuss the final shortlist of the top five with Ripple Steam before making the final decision.

The name does need to reflect both our locality, style of beer and that it is going on a commercial product (so no ‘Boaty, MacBoat Face’ names please, although I do like ‘Hoppy MacHop Face’ [Joke]).

We will also need to stick with this name for the foreseeable future for our Green Hop Beer – in future years we may be in a position to develop more beers and more names!

Let the games commerce

This is all very positive news – I did not think we would be at this stage until 2019!