GREEN hops are being turned into beautiful beer by the Ledbury Real Ales company.

Ant Stevens, who runs Ledbury Real Ales with Kate Stevens said it is a great time of year to be involved with brewing beer.

He said: "It is that most wonderful time of the year for us all here at Ledbury Real Ales - Hop Harvest time!!!!

"The harvest started in Herefordshire at the start of this week and so we are brewing today our first green hop beer of the 2024 harvest.

"A quick trip down to see Sarah Hawkins to collect some freshly picked Early Choice Goldings."

Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant Humulus lupulus, a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants.

They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to which, in addition to bitterness, they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas.

Hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine.

The hops plants have separate female and male plants, and only female plants are used for commercial production.

The hop plant is a vigorous, climbing, herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden (in the South of England), or hop yard (in the West Country and United States) when grown commercially.

Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types used for particular styles of beer.

The green hops for Ledbury Real Ales came from Hawkins Farming in Herefordshire.

Hawkins Farming is a truly mixed enterprise.

They gather in grains, hops and apples in a harvest season lasting four months.

And with careful, sustainable crop, land and soil management, not to mention their pedigree Herefords, taking up the rest of the year, there is never a dull moment.