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Bristol’s new people-powered pint
A new community-powered brew made from hops grown in allotments and back gardens across the city is ready to be poured into pint glasses.
Bristol Hops Collective’s latest beer is aptly called ‘Collective Effort’ in honour of the 54 growers who lovingly nurtured the hops used for the batch.
The collective produces a new beer each year with the help of a different brewery, with Fierce & Noble in St Werburgh’s stepping in for 2025.
is needed now More than ever
The duo organising the grassroots project is Guy Manchester and Jon Wheway, who first got involved in around 2017 and are just as passionate eight years on.
“We want to get people into growing and build a community,” said Jon.
Bristol Hops Collective is nomadic with Fierce & Noble in St Werburgh’s brewing the latest harvest
Bristol Hops Collective was established in 2016 by four friends who wanted to bring people together to produce a unique beer each year using homegrown hops.
The project gets people of all skill levels involved in gardening, providing a shared experience from planting and nurturing the hops to the final harvest.
Guy described the scattered plots of hops as “a patchwork farm”, with the most rewarding aspect the community of growers it creates.
“People from all walks of life now grow hops, whether it’s in pots or in their allotments and gardens.”
The initiative’s “cropathon” is an annual harvesting event where residents gather to collectively pick the hops they have grown themselves
Over the years, yield from Bristol Hops Collective has grown “exponentially”, with the most recent crop of fresh “green” hops producing around 3,000 litres of beer.
Beer is usually made with dried hops or compressed dried pellets, so the collective claims the green hop ale produces “a unique beer with a very special taste”.
With each year comes challenges, from ensuring that all the hops are “the best quality they can be” to finding a new brewery that can brew the beer.
“We decided to go nomadic back then because there are so many fantastic breweries in Bristol,” said Jon, an engineer by day.
“We thought: why don’t we take this project to them all? It’s a really rare opportunity for brewers to brew beer like they used to, with locally grown, fresh green hops.”
The fresh, “green” hops are grown in allotments, gardens or even small pots on balconies across Bristol
Owing to the variety of hops grown in a multitude of settings, plus the different breweries, the flavour profile of the collective’s beer changes year on year.
Collective Effort is a traditional bitter tasting “malty with a little bit of liquorice, but very subdued”, according to Jon.
Speaking about the name, Guy said: “We are a collective of people, and everyone has put in effort to make this beer. So it just felt like the right name of this beer this year.”
Collective Effort is the fitting name of the initiative’s new people-powered beer
Looking to the future, Jon dreams of a collective-hosted festival beer featuring multiple breweries, while Guy looks forward to making the process “even more sustainable”.
“We’re a very different beast now than we were in 2016,” Jon said. “There was only a handful of people back then, and now we have an entire collective.
“But it’s still got a lot of love, and everyone who’s part of it, including us, really enjoys coming back and doing it every year.”
To find out more about Bristol Hops Collective or to get involved, visit bristolhopscollective.co.uk
All photos: Guy Manchester
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