Around Britain with a fork

Matthew Fort on hop-growing and a special pub in Worcestershire

'There's an old saying, it's better to be a gambler than a hop grower," says John Walker, hop grower and farmer on Ankerdine Farm in the Teme valley, where the river coils its way through lush country beneath Ankerdine Hill.

The names of British hops - Fuggles, Challenger, Northdown, Sovereign, Admiral, First Gold - may be as down to earth as the beer they flavour, but by nature they are staggeringly delicate and sickly, prone to mildew, aphids, wilt and cold springs - some years you don't get a harvest at all. That was why, traditionally, hops were grown in this part of the world as only part of mixed farm production. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the number of English hop growers has plummeted.

This year it was a cold spring in the Teme valley, and even I can tell the hops don't look in tip-top condition. Many have climbed only part of the way up the 20ft high wires that support them and stopped. Still, John and his brother Tom believe in the hops, as did their father and grandfather before them. They grow 50 acres of them, and they are getting ready the machinery that will strip the hops from the vines and the kilns that will dry them. It'll be three or so weeks of deliriously hard work, 7.30am to midnight or later.

The thing is, you can't make proper English beer without proper English hops, and Chris Gooch is depending on the Walkers' crop. He brews beer at the Talbot Inn, behind which this tract of the brothers' hops grows. It's a neat symbiotic relationship. Chris never set out to be a brewer. He started off life as a biochemist, then became a stockman for Phillip Clift, who farmed down the road. Phillip is brother to Wiz and Annie Clift, who've run the Talbot with idiosyncratic panache for 15 years. And Phillip happened to have this old brewing kit sitting in a barn...

Now Chris brews 180 gallons of This, That, T'Other and Bride's Blush twice a week, using the Walkers' hops and malt from a floor maltings in Warminster, and supplying pubs and off-licences in a 30-mile radius. He sells everything he can brew.

Chris wants, he says, to make beer in the Midland tradition - that is, with a higher degree of bitterness than I am used to. While he zooms off into technicalities about alpha acids, spent grains, late hopping and the like, I work my way through the beers - "Perky, with pronounced bitterness giving way to fruity flavours", say my tasting notes of This. "Meatier, rounded bitterness coming through as a secondary effect": that was That. T'Other was "kindly, like a Dublin or malted loaf". And Bride's Blush, which Chris brewed in honour of Tom Walker's recent marriage, suggested "a firm and forthright bride of some substance". Oh, and Annie Clift cooked the wedding feast.

If ever there was a pub with its roots in the surrounding countryside, it is the Talbot. The beers it serves are made from hops grown in the fields behind the pub. The chunky slices of pearly-pink ham with splendidly old-fashioned parsley sauce I ate for lunch came from Annie's own pigs. The vegetables are hers, too. The rabbit and pigeon that formed the slab of terrine that went before were shot in the adjoining fields and woods. The strawberry relish was made from a job lot that a local grower dumped on Annie one morning. There's steak from Hereford cattle (the Talbot's almost on the border) and local cheeses. There's a list of the suppliers on every table - eggs from Harold at Knightwick, walnuts from Knightwick Manor, soft fruits from Mill Orchard... This pub is of the place and its people.

Chris has to go - deliveries. It's part of the service. You don't get that from the big brewers, or even medium-sized ones, come to that. It's a pity, he says, that I won't be around for the green beer festival. Green beer? Beer made with hops that haven't been dried. Do you know, I think I might.

Where to get it

Teme Valley Brewery: Knightwick, Worcestershire, 01886 821235 (

The Talbot Inn: Knightwick, Worcestershire, 01886 821235 (

Ankerdine Farm: Knightwick, Worcestershire.

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