Green Hop Season 2024

This year we're celebrating the Green Hop season to its fullest, with two events at our Taproom.

Green Hop Launch

Save the date: Saturday 21st September

We'll be launching our Green Hop Ale on Saturday the 21st of September. As expected, the barrel will be tapped at 12:30pm by our elected VIP. However, this year we've also got a few more surprises up our sleeve. We've been plotting behind the scenes and are excited to welcome 'the spirit of the hop' to sample the first pint of the season. We don't want to spoil the surprise too much, but wear your greenest, funkiest outfits and get ready for some GADDS' Green Hop madness.

Live music from GADDZUKES at 2pm and comfort food from Wrap-a-Roast (to soak up that Green Hop goodness) will be served all day. 

Green Hop Beer Festival

Save the date: Saturday the 5th of October 

We've decided to add a new event to this year's calendar, because you can never have too much Green Hop.

Featuring 12 guest Green Hop ales, live music from The SuperMicks, and curries from our friends at Karara.

This will be a day to celebrate the breadth of brilliant Green Hop beers that are brewed by some of our favourite breweries.

There will be more details coming over the following weeks, so keep an eye on our social media for more updates.

Welcome to GADDS' 22nd Birthday Beer Festival!

Here's a short and sweet guide......

Tokens - in order to keep service as speedy as possible, all transactions are by tokens. Please buy these at the tokens station near the main entrance. Here you can pay by card or cash. Any unused tokens can be exchanged for cash or donated to this year's charity.

Glasses - get these with your tokens and please hang on to them! There are only just enough so if you lose yours, you may have to wait for your next pint.

Beers

From the iconic 175 year old Manchester Brewer, Joseph Holt, we have Mild, at 3.2%, and Bitter, at 4%. There's a special place in my heart for these beautifully brewed and deliciously drinkable beers.

T&R Theakston, brewers in Masham, Yorkshire, are even older, clocking up 200 years in the biz. From them we have the legendary dark ale, Old Peculier, at 5.6% and their 'Best' Bitter at 3.8%.

Tom's Tap and Brewhouse in Crewe is our next stop where old chum Sean brews an eclectic mix of cask ales. We've selected Dark Mild (3.8%) and Brit Hopped Pale Ale (4.1%).

Over to the West Country next for some cask ale of exceptional quality from Wye Valley Brewery: HPA (4%) and Wholesome Stout (4.6%). WVB are the standout success in cask brewing over the last 30 years, for very good reason!

And on to the Surrey Hills Brewery where we found former Supreme Champion Beer of Britain winner, Shere Drop (4.2%), and the strong and hoppy Collusion (5.2%).

It wouldn't be a GADDS' beer festival without our friends from Burning Sky in Sussex. We have a new one from them, NZPA (4.5%) - so new there isn't a link for it - and old favourite Aurora (5.6%).

Closer to home we have a couple of casks from that there London: our friends Sambrook's Brewery and their Wandle (3.8%) and Junction (4.5%). Quality cask ale from the smoke.

From GADDS' cask store we have many of the regular favourites and some experimental ales. Of particular note are: Blarney Stone Stout (4.3%) and She Sells Dry Hops (4.7%).

If that wasn't enough we have, on keg, Burning Sky Arise (4.4%), Utopian British Lager (4.7%), Sambrooks Pagoda Pilsner (4.5%), Utopian x GADDS' Green Hopped Pilsner (5%) and Sambrooks Block Party IPA (5.5%).

Then, once you worked your way through that lot you can take a vintage bottle or two from our cellar home: Westvleteren 12 - a super sought after trappist rarity, 2 year aged Orval, 10 year aged GADDS' Imperial Russian Stout, and 2021 vintage GADDS' Chairman of the Board.

The festival runs from midday on Good Friday until 5pm that evening, and we go again midday Easter Saturday, until 5pm. Some of the beers may run out before you get here, but we will be holding some specials back for Saturday, and we'll be brewing on the pilot plant too, ensuring both days are quality days.

Friday March 29th, midday - 5pm

Saturday March 30th, midday - 5pm

 

Earth Day IPA

 

April 22^nd, 2023, marks the fifty-third anniversary of the first Earth Day, and represents a chance for all of us to reflect on the personal, and professional, footprint we’re destined to leave behind on the planet. We’re going through a period of growing realisation that change is necessary (on many fronts) if those footprints aren’t to trample the chances of survival for our descendants, and, as a brewing industry, we’re acutely aware that we have changes to make too. But how can the small/medium sized brewer shoulder their fair share of the burden? What tactics can we employ to reduce our impact on the planet, and can they align with our quest to produce the perfect pint? The brewers from GADDS’ and TOAST got together to investigate, and made a plan to produce a tasty modern cask pale ale, whilst employing a dozen carbon reducing techniques:

1. Walking/cycling/busing to work. An easy win: leaving the car at home for short journeys is a no-brainer, so that’s what we did.

2. Breadcrumbs: the guys at TOAST are pioneering the use of waste bread (there’s an eyewatering amount, daily) in brewing. We replaced 5% of our high footprint malted barley with negative footprint waste bread crumb.

3. Raw barley: the malting process adds footprint to barley, so we replaced a further 5% of our malted barley with raw barley. We can’t replace it all, because a) we need enzymes from the malt, so it wouldn’t work, and b) even if it did work, it wouldn’t taste like anything resembling a modern cask pale ale (ie, the brief).

4. Super Pale Malt: after barley is germinated by the maltster it needs to be dried in an oven, where it picks up a bit of colour. Super pale malt isn’t dried as much, using less energy in the process, and making our beer super pale!

5. Reduced boil time: this would have been a great idea, but we realised it wouldn’t produce a clear pint, and we couldn’t find a way round that in our brewery. We could make a cloudy beer this way, but that wasn’t in the brief either. So we binned the idea for now and will spend sometime pondering it. It would reduce our energy requirements significantly.

6. High gravity brewing: here the idea is to brew our sugary wort a bit stronger (5%), and water it down a little after the boil, saving on the energy used for boiling. This is relatively common practice and A Good Idea (but don’t take it too far, or the beer will be rubbish – Ed).

7. Using locally grown hops: hops grown within 30 miles, and delivered in bulk once a year, direct from the farm, have the edge over those shipped from afar in small amounts. This is common practice at GADDS where we use a lot of the fabulous East Kent Golding variety, grown up the road.

8. Using new UK hop varieties: ‘modern’ cask pale ale suggest some big, punchy flavours often found in hops grown in the USA, New Zealand or Australia. However, the UK hop industry, known primarily for its exquisitely balanced, classically understated hops, is fighting back, breeding some exciting new varieties full of intensity. We used Harlequin (passion fruit and peach) and Jester (grapefruit and tropical fruit) to flavour our IPA, and they were grown right here in the UK.

9. Solar: in brewing we control fermentation temperatures using electricity hungry chilling machines, and the stronger the sunshine and the warmer it gets, the more the machines work and use energy. Luckily for us, this suits solar panels perfectly as they work best when that sun is out. At GADDS’, on a reasonable day, all our electricity is provided by the solar array on the roof.

10. Carbon dioxide capture: all alcoholic fermentation produces CO₂ at a rate of about 1 gram per gram of alcohol, so fermenting your evening litre of ale releases about 35 to 40 grammes into the atmosphere. But, this CO₂ was absorbed from the atmosphere by the growing barley, so it’s classed as ‘biogenic’ and doesn’t increase your carbon footprint. That said, capturing the CO₂ from fermentation is a super way of removing it from the atmosphere, so that’s what we do at GADDS’. Once it’s cleaned, purified and condensed into liquid in a mobile storage tank we take it over to the local bottling company, to be put back into beer.

11. Enzymatic cleaning: as every thoroughly modern householder knows, enzymes are the boss of cleaning these days, and they’re moving into the brewing industry. They’re very good at breaking proteins and starches down, and they’re environmentally friendly. Historically we brewers have used caustic soda at high temperatures – it’s quite a nasty chemical, with a high footprint, and we’re very glad to be seeing the back of it. All casks of Earth Day IPA will be cleaned with enzymes, as will the fermentation vessel.

12. Vegan finings: for the last hundred years or so brewers and wine makers have clarified their drinks using a protein derived, typically, from fish. We don’t know what the footprint of the fish is, but we do know they’d prefer to be left unmolested, so we’ve found an alternative method to drop the yeast out making Earth Day IPA vegan friendly.

13. For good measure, and to make up for not reducing our boil time (see 5), all Earth Day IPA will be sold in casks for consumption in the pub. This avoids single use packaging, stores the beer at 12°C in the pub (instead of 6°C in your fridge) and gets you all into your local hostelry, so you can switch the central heating off! Win:win.

We’re not claiming this beer will save Earth, but it was a lot of fun and allows us to open discussions on how we can all help to make a difference. Ours is the most ancient of industries, steeped in history and carried out using artisanal methods bestowed on us by previous generations. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change, and adapt, whilst retaining the fundamental way we make beer, and the consequent fabulous pint. So, whilst you sup on a pint or two of Earth Day IPA, raise a glass and TOAST everyone determined to make a difference. 

Here’s to change! 

Cheers.

 

PS Look out for Earth Day IPA in all the usual local East Kent hostelries of choice from around the 14^th of April. Or come to our tasting, tickets here.

GADDS' comes of age

It’s 21 years this March since the first casks of GADDS’ Number 3 Premium Kentish Pale Ale (Number 3, for short) were tapped and drunk in the Ramsgate Royal Harbour Brewhouse and
Bakers (The Belgian Bar, for short). 21 years of ups and downs and changes and no changes, and we’ll all have time to reflect and recount on all things GADDS’, Kent, brewing, and beer over a few pints of iconic cask ale at the Brewery’s 21st Birthday Cask Beer Festival, at the GADDS’ Taproom, this Good Friday and Easter Saturday. 

But I’ll likely be busy serving you, so I’ll take this opportunity to look back, and look forward. 

Those first casks of #3 were delicious, and in our naivety we thought we were poised to take over the Kent beer scene very quickly (whatever that meant). But the casks we sent out to local pubs were sent back a week later, not having dropped bright. And the replacement casks were also sent back, for the same reason. This was a very early lesson in quality control – we had been filling the casks in the beer cellar, a place where beer gets spilt and wild yeasts thrive. Also a place with a big fan blowing cold air around the casks, and blowing the wild yeast into the beer as the beer went into the casks. And although we figured out our mistake fairly early on, at least one of those early pub customers didn’t trust us again for a few years (looking at you Artillery Arms!). No grudges held, to be honest I’m surprised the other two pubs did trust us again so quickly. Following that, and to this day, we don’t send any batches of beer out until we’ve checked how they’ll behave in the cellar (and we’re not fussed about taking over the Kent beer scene, either). 

Whilst building the brewery, one Saturday evening a certain local pub magnate (on his way to the casino opposite) found his way into the building site and enquired politely what kind of beer the brewery under construction was going to produce. ‘Real ale’, I replied, ‘No one drinks that around here’ were the kind words of encouragement (curse) I received in return. He was right of course, the number of pubs in Thanet with active handpumps could be counted on one hand. That didn’t change for a few years until the Thanet branch of CAMRA held that first, game changing beer festival at the Monkey House in 2006. The rip-roaring success showed that not only was drinking beer on a bank holiday Friday popular round here, but that the local population really were looking for the good stuff, and would enjoy it in great quantity given the opportunity. At last, the curse was broken, and the success of the festival catalysed a Thanet revolution, transforming the beer and pub desert landscape into the oasis it is today. 

Of course, timing is everything and the worldwide craft beer movement (taking encouragement from Thanet CAMRA, no doubt) got underway. New breweries were springing up all over the place and the number in Kent began to rise from the 9 it had been stuck on for a few years (OK, name all 9?). Change was afoot for GADDS’ too, as we moved operations from the Belgian Bar to our new home up at Hornet Close, and focused on producing cask ale for the pubs and people of East Kent. But whilst the number of Kent breweries was rising, the number of handpumps available wasn’t (yet) and sales were flat, at that just-about-enough level. In the ‘old days’ we’d always get a decent mid-summer boost from the Canterbury branch of CAMRA, and their Kent Beer Festival, who could be relied upon to buy up to 10 kilderkins from each of the Kent breweries, equating to a 25% uplift in sales in a week for us at GADDS’. As the number of new brewery openings accelerated, this much appreciated bonus diminished, and we went off to music festivals, where cool, local cask ale found favour in an otherwise sea of short poured Heineken. 

A couple of years after the big move to Hornet Close, a combination of a localism movement, the ongoing annual success of the Planet Thanet Easter Beer Festival, an emerging craft beer revolution, and a rise in the number of Kent breweries, produced a growing interest in (and demand for) local beer that finally began to take effect, and our phone started to ring. Local publicans were at last open to the idea that cask ale might just work for them. Sales rose strongly and we rebuilt the brewery, purchasing Dark Star’s old kit and tripling capacity. By this time we had long had our core beer range of Numbers 3, 5 and 7, alongside Seasider and Dogbolter, and we organised our specials into an annual seasonal range, adding such beers as She Sells Seashells, Rye Pale Ale and Summer’s Day. 

Licensing laws had changed in 2005 and a certain off-licence owner not too far from Thanet took advantage, adding an on-licence to his modest, beer only establishment, hailing it as a micro-pub and evangelising the concept. Eventually, in 2010, Colin Aris from Ramsgate answered the calls and opened Thanet’s very own micro-pub, The Conqueror, on the westside of town. The Bake and Ale House and the Four Candles followed, and the flood gates opened. Today there are around 14 or 15 micro-pubs in Thanet, adding to the many existing pubs now serving cask ale and helping to create the beer oasis of today. 

It was in September 2009 that, taking inspiration from a visiting brewer from Falling Rock in California, we tentatively brewed our first batch of Green Hop Ale, not really knowing what we were doing, how it would turn out or what might happen next. The brewing gods smiled upon our efforts and the rest is history. The popularity of Green Hop Ale far exceeded anything anyone expected and continues to grow year by year, so much so that today we brew nothing else during harvest. Sadly in 2020, following a global collapse in demand for hops due to a big fall in beer consumption during lockdowns (I know, the headlines would have you believe we were all pickling ourselves in booze, but the truth is that the drop in hospitality drinking far exceeded the rise in home tippling), our much loved local farmer, Humphrey Hulme, was forced to quit his lifelong love of growing East Kent Goldings hops, and focus on his core fruit business. We’d used Humphrey’s EKGs in most of our beers for 18 years, and they had become the very lifeblood running through the brewery. These kind of blows can knock a business sideways, but this one turned out to be not so bad afterall – we moved our hop contracts over to the fabulous growers on Syndale Farm, John Clinch and his daughter Anna, who have produced, in the last two years, the most amazingly good EKGs this author has seen in 30 years.

GADDS’, of course, is really about the people that make it and the people that drink it, and no potted history of it is complete without remembering absent friends. We lost our Chairman, Dave, in 2020, and our Grahame in 2022. I’m sure that the cosy back street pub in the sky stocks GADDS’: Number 7 on cask, and Number 3 in the bottle (served in a Fosters glass). 

Today, in 2023, in a post-pandemic world, with certain parts of the country (principally London) reporting plummeting cask ale sales, and brewers all over the UK moving into keg, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the future looks bleak for both GADDS’ and for CAMRA. Quite the opposite, in my mind – cask ale is the fastest, freshest way of producing beer, with the very least amount of processing, and, delivered to (and drunk in) a local pub it has the smallest carbon footprint of all the beers. It’s also extremely delicious, and these attributes will ensure cask ale will survive, and flourish, long into the future. And where there is cask, there is a local CAMRA branch. 

So come on down to GADDS’ Birthday Beer Festival of Iconic Cask Ales from Across the Land this Good Friday and Easter Saturday, and raise a glass to another 21 years of great cask beer in Thanet.

Cracker Time!

Deck the halls and all that, it's December and the holiday season is just round the corner. As has become trad', we here at GADDS' have been brewing up a sturdy ruby ale for you to enjoy with your kin, and with your tofurkey (with all the trimmings).

Crystal barley malt, and some crystalised malted rye, bring a deep warming colour and festive red berry character to the beer, whilst a team of Kentish hops, led by Bramling Cross, add the fresh green contrast. It's a comforting ale, capable of driving the damp away and leaving you with a jolly glow.

We're launching Little Cracker at the Taproom tomorrow afternoon, with GADDZUKES providing the seasonal carols, and our dear friend Chutney Paul the Xmas curries. It's an unticketed celebration so just show up anytime from 12:30 to 3pm. Or go the whole nut roast and book yourself on a morning brewery tour to whet the appetite.

If you can't make it tomorrow don't panic: you'll find this fine celebration of the Yule in all self-respecting East Kent alehouses over the next few weeks, and you'll be able to order it here for home delivery in 10 or 20 litre polypins.

Cheers!

The GADDS

Green Hop Pilsner - a Utopian Collaboration

Utopian: "modelled on, or aiming for, a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic."

Collaboration: "the action of working with someone, to produce something."

Also Utopian: "a fabulous craft brewery in Devon, specialising in perfecting the art of lager brewing with British ingredients."

Also collaboration: "the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts."

For a number of years we've harboured the desire to create a delicious pilsner using freshly picked, undried, 'green' hops (East Kent Goldings, to be specific) - crisp and clean, with an elegant, floral, green hop aroma. So when the good people at Utopian Brewing suggested a collaboration, we jumped at the chance. 

It's finally ready, and you can order it here, in time for the official launch on Wednesday 23rd at both the Ravensgate Arms in Ramsgate, and at Topsham Brewery and Taproom, in Exeter, if you're down that way. Read on if you're interested in how it was brewed.

One of the secrets, the main secret in fact, to brewing great pilsner is in the fermentation - to secure the 'clean' part of the specification, this must be conducted at distinctly chilly temperatures of around 10°C, slowing the yeast down to a relative crawling pace. Now, our own yeast wouldn't get out of bed for anything cooler than 14°C but, luckily for us, the Utopian strain, no doubt (nefariously) first obtained from a centuries old Bavarian craft brewery in a hollowed out walking stick (or such), is a master of the colder arts. These ninja strains possess a princess and the pea characteristic, and must be protected from the real world at all costs - basically, if it isn't at just the right temperature, in just the right fermenting beer, in just the right shaped fermenting vessel, it has to be undisturbed, and close to freezing, in the dark confines of a medieval cellar below Munich. For this reason, very early on the morning of our brewday, the yeast was rushed up from Devon, packed in ice in the back of a brewers' campervan/yeast ambulance, compassionately cared for by the very highly qualified, German trained, Utopian Brew Master. This set the tone for our collaboration.

Syndale Farm near Faversham, towards the end of harvest, was the early morning meeting venue. Farming father and daughter, John and Anna Clinch, grow the very finest East Kent Golding hops in the world here - the 'brick earth' land blessed with cool, springtime, on-shore breezes and warm, sunny, mid-summer sunshine that this hop variety loves. Walking this land is essential to set the tone for green-hop-brewing, followed by hop chat with pickers and, finally, collecting a van full of freshly picked, green, and aromatic hop cones. It was a tough harvest this year, the bines coming under a lot of water stress due to drought conditions. This isn't good for the farmers as the crop is consequently short, but it's great for brewers and drinkers as the hop flavour and aroma tends to improve. These are the best EKG this author has seen in 30 years.

Once back at the brewery we made beer, mashing UK grown 'Czech' pilsner malt and loading our hop stash very late in the boil, before pitching the sleepy, unsuspecting Utopian yeast.

German trained brewers behaving strangely

Fermentation was cool, and slow; if it's a super clean brew you're looking for, you need to be patient. Once all the sugars have been used up, the temperature is dropped slowly, and daily, to get below zero without upsetting the pernickety yeast (most off-flavours in beer are due to brewers upsetting pernickety yeast).

After 2 weeks of fermentation, and 6 weeks of cold lagering, the Green Hop Pilsner was canned, and kegged, unfiltered. And here we are - it's in warehouse, and ready to ship on Monday. 

We do our own thing at GADDS', and rarely collaborate, but we do strive for Utopia, and when we find it, this beer will be on tap.

Get some here, and use the code "sawitontheblog" for a 5% discount (a reward for reading all this way down the page, thanks).