It’s all about the hops this time of year and this season is no exception. With the move to Wales now fully committed we had to find a new home for our ever-growing hop family. Our end goal is to build a fully incorporated indoor hop yard/farm, where we can grow hops, run Dark Farm and, obviously, make loads of beer. So we ventured west to find land.

Sadly, it seems that every other Tom, Dick and Harry has moved to the countryside in the covid exodus - swapping city living for pastures green. Which we are all in favour of, but it has made our plans a little trickier. With greater competition and rising property prices - unprecedented in this area - we are struggling to find that perfect patch of land.

There’s nothing like a challenge to force you to be creative so we had to start thinking outside the box - hops wait for no man! We took a look back to our own grassroots and returned to our original business idea written five years ago when Dark Farm was first created: to build a hop yard in a disused warehouse.

After searching online for storage units to help with our warehousing we stumbled upon a gem of a building. A huge industrial unit situated in West Wales, with clear roofing and 10m high rafters. We couldn’t believe our luck! After approaching the owners and presenting our idea (and offering monthly supplies of free beer) they handed over the keys.

We purchased more pots to expand our hydroponic yard to 400 plants and got started. Two months later, and after some gravity defying stringing techniques, the hops are up and well on their way. I have to say that they do look amazing and our indoor hop yard is a joy to work in: no external issues from the weather to contend with, or slugs blocking the watering system - just good tunes and happy times. Simply bliss!

We also harvested our hop rhizomes this year to sell for the first time, which has been a huge success, nearly selling all our plants within weeks! So if you want to dabble in a little gardening and produce a green (fresh hops) brew with your own vines next year, take a look at our website.  

I have also had the pleasure of brewing up litres and litres of beer in a shiny new brew shed built inside a container unit with a 32amp socket (whoop whoop). And I’ve been testing the prototype of “Brew Tank” (which also runs on a domestic plug) ready for its launch later this summer. No doubt you will be hearing a lot more from us about this so I won’t go on about our new and amazing, highly adaptable all-in-one brewing system which has energised and vastly improved my brewing experience... wink, wink. I absolutely love it! Watch this space...