Green Hop Ales come of age at the Dovecote

On Friday, in the company of three members of West Kent CAMRA branch, I visited the Dovecote Inn, situated in the tiny hamlet of Capel. Two of us travelled by bus, taking the 205 Autocar service from Tonbridge, and then alighting at Five Oak Green – a linear village, close to Paddock Wood. From there, it was a 20-minute walk, along the lanes to the Dovecote, which along with the adjacent row of Victorian houses, forms part of a rather isolated settlement.

Capel must have been a larger settlement at some time in the past, as half a mile up the road is the church of St Thomas a Becket, which dates back to Norman times. Becket himself is said to have preached at this church, and the tower was partly rebuilt following a fire in 1639. The church contains some extensive wall paintings, which cover most of the nave, which I haven’t seen, although I shall make the effort to do so, when I have a bit more time. The building is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Returning to the Dovecote, the pub is holding a Green Hop Ale Festival this weekend, and with 14 different beers on sale, as well as the pub’s usual stalwarts of Harvey’s and Larkin's, it would have seemed rude, not to have paid a visit. It also provided, for me, the ideal opportunity of sampling a few of 2023’s crop of GHA’s for the first time. I had missed out on the launch of Kent Green Hop Beer Fortnight, for a variety of reasons, and shortly after the promotion’s launch, I was out of the country for three weeks. The event at the Dovecote therefore presented an opportunity to redeem the situation, in a small, but quite significant way.

The significance derives from a school of thought which says that although Green Hop Ales are intentionally brewed using freshly harvested hops, the finished beers benefit from a period of maturation and storage. This idea, and the principles behind it, is slowly gaining traction, and when one looks back at the concept over its relatively short history, it begins to make sense. The very first Green Hop Ales 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.  

Hops, of course, are normally dried and 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. Freshly harvested hops are not dried and are added “wet” – or “green” and whilst some might think it a simple matter of extrapolating back the dried hop weight for the wet one, in theory it doesn’t always work out like that.

Consequently, many of the original GHA’s were unbalanced, and rather over-hopped, to put it mildly! I remember some of these beers possessing a rich resinous taste, alongside an almost oily texture. In many cases you could actually feel the hops oils coating your tongue and the roof of your mouth. This feature was obviously apparent to the brewers of these beers, and gradually, they now seem to have cut down on the amount of wet hops used. As mentioned earlier, the suspicion was green hops were being added to the brew-kettle at the same rate that would have been used for normal dried hops.

Appropriate adjustments were made, but many lovers of these beers felt that the pendulum had swung back too far in the opposite direction. This was apparent in 2019, when I attended the launch of that year’s Kent Green Hop Beers Fortnight, at the Canterbury Food & Drink Festival. I wrote at the time that whilst all the green-hopped beers I tried that day were good, there was little to distinguish them from their normal dry-hop counterparts. 

Several of my companions said the same thing, and we all decided this was because the brewers of GHA’s had become more adept, over the years, at using hops in their natural “wet” state. So, by cutting the amount of green hops used to brew this uniquely seasonal type of beer, the brewers inadvertently removed the very characteristics that attracted drinkers to green-hopped beers in the first place. In effect, a unique and very time of year dependent beer, had been turned into just another run of the mill and rather ordinary one.

Fast forward four years, and in response to this, and with an eye to perhaps rekindling some of the hoppy-resinous character that was a salient feature of those early, GHA’s, the aforementioned idea of allowing the beer to age, and mature, has come about. A chance to sample some of them presented itself at the Spa Valley Railway Beer Festival, a collaboration between West Kent CAMRA and the Tunbridge Wells - based, heritage railway. As in previous years the event included a dedicated Green Hop Beer Bar, featuring one of the widest range of GHA’s in the country.

The beer festival took place last weekend, which unfortunately clashed with our return from holiday, especially as there was lots to do on the home and domestic front. In a small, but still significant way, the Dovecote’s Green Hop Beer Festival acted as a replacement for the main event, at least for me. There were 17 GHA’s on sale, the majority racked on a stillage, occupying an alcove, close to the front door of the pub. 

I think I am correct in saying that this was the Dovecote’s first event involving green hop beers, and the selection they put on was a mixture of old favourites alongside a few newcomers. The majority of the beers were from brewers based in Kent and Sussex, although there was one from north London-based Redemption using hops freshly harvested from Townend Hop Farm, in Herefordshire. The latter was an important feature, as the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, have now overtaken Kent in terms of the acreage of hops grown.

I kicked off with Gadd’s Green Hop from Ramsgate, described as a pale ale high in bitterness, with floral hops through and through. This 4.8% beer didn’t disappoint, as I knew it wouldn’t, especially as Gadd’s have a reputation amongst local drinkers for the quality of their beers. Next up was the 4.3% Cascade Green Hop from Bexley Brewery. Brewed, as its name suggests, using fresh Cascade hops, I wasn’t sure at first whether or not to go for this one. Bexley Brewery beers always seemed a bit hit and miss to me, but after my CAMRA friends informed me, the company had upped its game, I bit the bullet and went for it.

It was a decent and refreshing session bitter, so I was pleased not to have let past prejudices affect my choice of beer.  I only had time for one final beer, as I needed to be back at Bailey Towers before 3 pm. You might have seen me mention the decorators we had in, whilst we were away. Their brief was to paint the walls, ceilings and exposed woodwork on our stairs and landing, a task we had only half-heartedly undertaken during the past three decades. I’d also asked them to remove the stair carpet, and with Mrs PBT’s keen on having a new one laid, a surveyor from Carpetright was booked to call.

This meant having to leave to leave the Dovecote at 2.15 pm, in order to catch the 205 bus back to Tonbridge. Before leaving the pub, I squeezed in a swift half of Wantsum Bullion, a 4.6% green hop stout brewed using Bullion hops. I written previously that the concept of green hopped dark beers doesn’t really work. This offering from Wantsum Brewery did little to change my mind, but sometimes you have to give these things a try.

I left my three friends to enjoy a few more GHA’s, plus some of the Dovecote's delicious looking food, and made my way back to Five Oak Green and the bus home. On my way to the bus stop, I realised I had left my umbrella in the pub. There wasn’t time to go back for it, so after a quick phone call with the licensee, to confirm its presence, I shall have to call in for it, some time over the weekend. It will be a good excuse to discover which GHA’s are left, and to grab a quick one for myself.