What a thrill, Aunty Jacks got to go on the first tour of the Rostrevor Hop Farms and HPA facility. A first for Aunty Jacks and the first for HPA for this year’s harvest season. To say Phil was a little rusty would be totally unfair – Phil was a gracious host and full of helpful information and stunning facts about the history of HPA, the present day Harvest and the future for hops in Australia.

We were taken through the processing plant, watching the 30 ft tall stripping machines separate hops from bine with ease, before they are separated further from leaves and sent into the kiln. The aroma within the killing shed full with freshly picked Galaxy was something we will be ‘smelling’ in our memory for months.

From the kiln, the hops are sent to the baling shed where literal mountains of dried hops are pressed into bales for storage and conditioning. Phil was quick to inform us we weren’t to ‘Scrooge McDuck’ into these hefty piles, which is lucky because it was crossing my mind…

A drive-by of the pelletiser showed the scale of how massive the production of hops is, a quick count of 390 neatly stacked pallets that each could hold roughly a tonne of finished hop pellets in their 5kg format. We will eagerly await our small allocation of 2024 Galaxy – a drop in the ocean but the same high quality throughout!

Quick drive into the hop fields that are scattered around Myrtleford and the base of Mt Buffalo and we were swept away to an other-worldly experience – 5m poles all lined with string and hop vines climbing their way up to the canopy. The agricultural aspect of hop growing and brewing was on show as a clever system of under cutters, over cutters and a ‘shunting tractor’ delicately but precisely stripped all the precious gems off the farm lots to ship back to the facility. Complex knotted roots dotting the already harvested lots were contrasted by the bushy, abundant the next row over.

A swing past the showcase lot was a chance to get up close to multiple varieties growing alongside each other. The variation from a Galaxy to the Topax to the experimental lots was very distinct – both in size, shape and the smell from a rub of the lupulin glands (yellow powdery glands containing the important oil compounds of the hops!) Some exciting new prospects in the experimental varieties, but also a very familiar if not amplified aroma when combining the Eclipse and Galaxy for a rub test, as these 2 hops feature in our Aunty Jacks Pale Ale.

It was an amazing experience being so up close to the core agricultural process and one we are very thankful to Phil and Hop Products Australia for having us in their world. Keep an eye out for some more HPA seasonals this year as well as savouring the aromas from these Australian grown hops in our crowd favourite Pale Ale.