The Hop Harvest 2026

The Weather

The weather played an even bigger factor this year, with drought conditions for much of the growing period. (You can read more about it here.) The hops, despite our concerns, performed better than expected, likely due to our heavy clay loam soil retaining what moisture there was. We watered a few of our newly planted hops but the rest were just monitored very closely. Harvest was dry too, which is especially great for our field team as they can get very wet picking hops in the rain!

The Hops

For the first time since Covid, we picked all of our hop varieties. Since 2020, there has been a surplus in the market and with demand reduced we have “idled” several acres of hops to help manage this. It was great to have Target hops running back through the kiln – we’ve missed their citrus and sage aroma!

There was still an empty patch in our hop yards though – a patch which used to be Olicana was grubbed due to disease in the plant last year. It has now been replanted with a Fuggle variety, grown especially for a well-known brewery (and their rather famous farming ambassador.)

The Team

We welcomed back friendly faces for another harvest, which is always such a nice way to begin the picking. Some of our team have been coming to Stocks Farm for decades, whereas others were new this year and a great addition to the team. Winthill Engineering were also on hand again to help run the machine for another season, keeping belts lubricated and making sure The Bruff was running efficiently. The crop was a bit lighter than average due to the hot weather, so picking was completed by the end of September.