Homegrown Hops

We recently dipped our toes into the world of hop-farming, working closely with a Hatton farmer on dwarf Pioneer variety trials. We also called on the expertise of Sandra Gordon & Euan Caldwell from The James Hutton Institute during this process. The James Hutton Institute carried out a four year trial (2014 - 2018) to determine the feasibility of Scottish hops as a viable commercial crop. We look to use this research to inform the six°north homegrown hop programme going forward.

Pioneer is a British hop variety, originally released in 1996. It is a high alpha, high yielding variety and has grapefruit and herbal characteristics. We chose to trial dwarf hop varieties simply because they are easier to manage, will still flower and can have a lot of breadth.

The team are very pleased with the progress our hops have made to date…we're due to harvest them in a few weeks time. We’re expecting a small crop in our first year but we are hopeful for a significantly larger yield in 2020.