Hinterland Hops are a small, family-owned hop farm situated just 10km from our brewery in Maleny run by Craig, his partner, Dave and his brother, Wade.
Craig worked as an airline pilot and, like many, found himself with a lot of spare time on his hands once COVID was in full swing. When we asked Craig why he began growing hops, his answer was pretty simple. “I love beer and the people in the brewing community and wanted to get involved. I can’t brew, but I do have a farm.”
Craig calls himself a soil farmer, “If you look after the soil, the rest will take care of itself." "I place significant effort in natural soil biology (mulch, fungi development etc). On this crop, I did not use ANY chemical sprays or insecticides.” Dave, a full-time vet, looks after the cattle health on the farm to ensure quality “crap” to help fertilise the hops. The first crop was planted in early September using Rhizomes (10cm long pieces of root) and was ready to harvest within nine weeks.
That is when Craig reached out to offer us his first crop of green hops, and we jumped at the opportunity. Our team went down and hand-picked hops from his 50 vines. We immediately came back to the brewery used them in this seasonal IPA. Green hop flowers of Victoria, Chinook, Cascade, Columbus and Centennial were picked and used in the hot side of this IPA.
Despite picking all 50 of his plants, we still needed to complement these with some dry hops of the same varieties. This IPA is fresh, local and impossible to recreate!
