Old Dairy Brewery Fresh Hop

Lovely place is Kent, don't really see enough of it.

The county hosts a scenic landscape of hop fields, oast houses, southerner folk, gardens and stuff like that. It's also the brewing place of my former Heriot Watt homie Edd Wray, who for this particular brew drove his bald ass down to the local hop farm and back on the brew day to collect the hops for this brew. I myself have never brewed a fresh hop beer but have tried a few from the US. So on receiving this 4% bottle conditioned offering I decided to go straight for the opener with no waiting to let it settle.

The aroma wasn't quite what I expected, kind of grassy wet earth with subtle sweet stone fruit, not like sticking your head into a fresh bag of fuggles. Some nice flavours here though, lots of leafy grassy hops seem to dominate over a slightly sweet malt centre of subtle summer fruits before it kicks into the familiar raspy peppery, leafy bitter prickle of English hops. The fresh hop presence makes itself known with a damp and plush sort of feel.

Overall an interesting drinking experience, a straight forward session bitter played in a different key. To hunt this one down you'll need to head over to the Kent Green Hop Beer Fortnight in Canterbury which takes place from 28th September till October 12th.