Hogs Back Brewery in Tongham, Surrey, will feature on this week’s Saturday Kitchen on BBC One, to be broadcast on 3 August.
The popular cookery show filmed in the brewery and adjacent hop garden this week to spotlight the essential role that Surrey-grown hops play in creating the Hogs Back beer range.
Saturday Kitchen presenter and chef Tim Anderson spoke to hop garden manager Matthew King in the new 8.5 acre garden, where Hogs Back is growing hops used in the brewery just yards away. When mature, the hop garden should provide 50% of their hop requirements.
Anderson then joined Hogs Back managing director Rupert Thompson in the brewery for a hop rubbing session, followed by a tasting of the brewery’s flagship ale TEA, or Traditional English Ale, which is made with 100% Surrey-grown Fuggles hops, including some from their hop garden.
The Saturday Kitchen team also took away supplies of Hogstar Lager, which will be used to make a beer batter during the live segment of the show.
Former MasterChef winner Anderson, who combines TV presenting chef duties with running his Brixton restaurant Nanban, said: “When I first moved to the UK, I became obsessed with cask ale, because we don’t have it in the USA, and TEA was one of the beers that I really enjoyed. It was very interesting to visit Hogs Back Brewery, find out how growing their own hops is helping them to brew more innovative and interesting beers, and to share a TEA with Rupert.”
Thompson added: “We were delighted to welcome Tim and the Saturday Kitchen team to the brewery and hop garden. Growing our own hops is helping us to better understand the way the ingredients used in brewing come together to produce a great local beer, just as chefs create a memorable dish.
“The hop garden is also an essential part of our commitment to brewing sustainably. With the hops grown just yards from the brewhouse, we are brewing beers with the freshest ingredients – ‘from field to firkin in a furlong’, as we say.”
Hogs Back’s new hop garden occupies 8.5 acres of prime farmland on Manor Farm, where the brewery was founded 27 years ago. With anchors, posts and several miles of hop wire in place, 2,000 hop plants were lifted from the old garden and a further 4,000 new ones planted. Three varieties are grown on the new site: Fuggles, Cascade and Farnham White Bine.
Hogs Back’s original hop garden featured in the BBC TV Countryfile programme in 2016, and the brewery has also featured on The Farmer’s Country Showdown on TV in 2018, and on BBC Radio 4’s On Your Farm programme in May this year.
Saturday Kitchen is on BBC One at 10am, and regularly attracts over 2 million viewers. The episode featuring Hogs Back will screen this Saturday, 3rd August, and afterwards on iPlayer.
Caption to attached images:
- Saturday Kitchen presenter Tim Anderson (left) raises a glass of TEA with Hogs Back Brewery managing director Rupert Thompson
- Rain didn’t stop play or filming at the Hogs Back Brewery (l-r) managing director Rupert Thompson, hop garden manager Matthew King and Saturday Kitchen presenter Tim Anderson
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Notes to editors
Hogs Back Brewery
- Hogs Back Brewery was founded in 1992 in Tongham, in the heart of the traditional Surrey hop growing area.
- Its flagship brand TEA, or Traditional English Ale, is one of the leading regional ales in the South East. The first beer brewed by Hogs Back in 1992, TEA has won multiple awards including runner-up in CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain in 2000. Distribution of TEA is currently at an all-time high.
- The Hogs Back Brewery range includes a number of award-winning draught and bottled beer, as it demonstrates its ability to combine brewing expertise and tradition with product innovation to create distinctive, memorable beers.
- Earlier this year Hogs Back launched three new keg ales: Little Swine, a 2.8% ABV pale ale that is also now available in 200 Tesco stores in bottles; Unfiltered Tea and Hog IPA. They also launched a new brand design for Hogstar lager, available in keg, bottles and cans.
- Hogs Back’s traditional cloudy cider, Hazy Hog, launched in 2013, won a Bronze medal in the International Cider Challenge earlier this year.
- Hogs Back planted a hop garden adjacent to its brewery in 2014, growing three hop varieties: Fuggles – used in its flagship TEA ale; Cascade – used in Hogstar lager; and Farnham White Bine, used in a limited-edition bottled beer of the same name.
- Hogs Back relocated its hop garden earlier this year and is planning to build a hop kiln and warehouse, as part of a £700,000 investment also covering hop picking and packing machinery and further brewery developments.
- At 8.5 acres, the new hop garden is nearly three times the size of the previous one and when fully mature will provide 50% of Hogs Back’s hops.
- The new kiln will be used to dry Hogs Back’s hops for around one month a year. For the rest of the year, it will serve as an event space and visitor centre, educating people about the local hop farming industry which Hogs Back is helping to revive.
- Siting the kiln and warehouse close to the hop garden means hops can be dried immediately after picking and will be packed within 24 hours using state-of-the-art vacuum packing technology to capture the hops’ freshness.
- The hop garden an essential part of Hogs Back’s commitment to brewing sustainably. With the hops grown just yards from the brewhouse, they are brewing beers with the freshest ingredients – ‘from field to firkin in a furlong’.
Issued on behalf of: Hogs Back Brewery
Further information:
Ros Shiel: ros@shielporter.com / 07841 694137
John Porter: john@shielporter.com / 07734 054389