What a year 2020 has become! Small businesses all over the UK have struggled to keep up with the ever changing rules and regulations as the pandemic sweeps the world. 

One of the great things to come out of the lockdown, however, is people’s freedom to enjoy the small things in life again. And one thing we’ve learnt is that you guys love to brew beer! Homebrew has had a huge increase in popularity over the past few months. Whether it was because people had more time to pick up the mash paddle again, or simply wanted to learn the craft of homebrewing now their regular supply had run dry; either way we salute you and will do our best to keep you brewing.

At Dark Farm we’ve worked hard to build a sustainable environment to work and play. We are not there yet and have a long way to go. But during this time we’ve loved building new friendships and partnerships within our community, helping and supporting one and other. Getting to test our Brew Crew’s creations was a top highlight. (pg 37)

Since our last issue in June, we’ve been nurturing our hydroponic hop farm and learning the technology which surrounds it, like organic feed, water harvesting and green energy. We’re very excited to say that our test batch of Chinook grown out of soil has now started to flower. Hopefully will be able to harvest and report back to you in our next issue in December.

With this small success, we are now very eager to start developing our plans for a full utopian hop yard. And these plans are big! Our goal is to grow one ton of hops by 2025. So we can keep supplying you all no matter what happens.

Our experience of 2020 is that we should all work harder to support our local businesses, buy British and support our community. When the shit hits the fan we have then got a strong support network to fall back on!

A huge thanks to all of you who’ve signed up to the Hop Club or purchased from our site. You guys make this all possible!