Episode #5: Walthamstow Beer Weekend
Bringing in the beer, and pickling tomatoes.
This last week on Plot 101 (yes, really) was one of the real turning points of the season, a true marker in our allotment year, as it was Beer Weekend.
To explain, we grow hop bines on our allotment and we contribute the hops they produce each year to a community beer project. Over two hundred people all over Walthamstow and the surrounding neighbourhoods grow hop bines in their back gardens, on allotments, in school playgrounds and guerilla patches of ground.
On a designated Sunday in September, Hop Picking Day, everyone cuts down their plants, bundles the whole lot up into bin bags and drops them off at a local microbrewery in Leyton, where there’s a community hop picking session helped along by a barbeque and free beers.
I can’t quite claim to grow beer on the plot, but this is about as close as it gets.
This week’s Plot Shot
Beer Weekend means plunging in to the green mêlée at the front of the plot, where Mr Whippy, the most established of our hop bines, holds court over the summer.
We call the hop bine Mr Whippy because the long tendrils curl through everything in their path, holding tight to nettles, currant bushes, anything. Wrestling them into black bin bags isn’t easy - the stems don’t sting like nettles, but they leave ugly red welts on skin. Mr Whippy is supposed to be a dwarf hop variety, but he clearly didn’t get that memo.
Plot work in progress
Frankly, the front of our plot is not looking its best and is in need of some work.
During the Covid pandemic, the local council didn’t send contractors to mow the main paths on our allotment site and as a result gangs of nettles from a wild area opposite our plot joined Mr Whippy’s party of chaos. It will be a winter job to shift all the pots, dig out the nettle runners and remake the front bed to curb Mr Whippy’s enthusiam. The picket fence needs some repairs, and a fresh coat of purple paint too. Both jobs are On The List.
At least cutting down the rampant hops gives the lavender plants more light and air. They are looking sorry for themselves, but I’ve given them a haircut and I’m hopeful that they’ll recover over the winter and bounce back next spring.
Harvesting now
It being Beer Weekend, we harvested our modest 2024 crop of ‘Prima Donna’ hops.
Fresh green hops are female cone-shaped flowers - soft, beautiful things with a delicate fragrance. Bees get drowsy from the scent of the pollen in them and I can understand why hop wreaths and garlands used to be brought into houses to keep rooms smelling of summer. Last year the bine was heavy with hops, and they came away from the plant in huge handfuls, but this year the summer has been slow, and we’ve barely filled one bin bag.
Also this week, the tomatoes have kept on coming. These ‘Indigo Rose Cherry’ are my favourite this week - eight perfect black-shouldered fruit on each truss.
Making and eating
Given the wave of ripe tomatoes, the making this week has been tomato sauce for pasta and pickles to be eaten over winter.
Our favourite tomato pickle recipe is for Andhra pickle, with a tadka of south Indian spices, which we make almost every summer and eat all year round. Here it is before being blended and bottled1.
My husband, Clive, arranged the spices on this shot so that we’d remember the ingredients for the tadka.
Local heroes
The shout-out this week has to go to the great community effort coordinated by the folks at the Walthamstow Beer Project and the East London Brewing Company, who together make our Walthamstow Beer. The brewery turn over their site and facilities for Hop Picking Day each year, when the project’s banner of a ‘Stow racing greyhound proudly hangs over the brewery doors.
The project has been growing for ten years now, and more people join each year. New Hoppers can buy a hop plant in the spring to join, returning Hoppers pay a few quid to be part of the year’s project. Everyone grows their plants over the summer and then contributes their hops to the year’s beer, which is brewed on the day.
Rather like allotments, Hop Picking Day is a ramshackle affair. Pickers sit on beer kegs rolled outside from the brewery, which is on a light industrial estate off the Lea Bridge Road. Proper East London shabbiness - there are neither airs nor graces on the Lea Bridge Road. Organised folk bring camp chairs. Small children waving hot dogs from the barbeque jump shrieking into dumpsters of hops, like a ball pit in Ikea, but better smelling and not made of plastic.
Hop Picking Day is a race to get as many hops picked off the bundles of bines and into the vat at an allotted hour, so that the project uses its available slot at the brewery. It is a race against the clock, and against the lure of ELB’s range of free beers on the day. Shouts of “More picking, less drinking!” go out all afternoon and are roundly ignored.
Last summer everyone managed to pick 154kg of hops on the day, which we cheered as a new record and calculated would make about 7,000 pints of beer, but this year we hit 204kg. It takes a *lot* of very small, very light hops to weigh 204kg!
All this effort makes a ‘green hopped’ Pale Ale, which is sold as a cask beer and in bottles around North East London. There is usually a Beer Launch day later in the year at a local pub, when Hoppers can claim their two free pints of the year’s beer and collect a few bottles to take home. I’ll report back in November on how this year’s beer turns out, and if there’s a new livery for our running dog logo.
Site community
Back at the allotment site it was a late summer weekend, the ground too hard and dry for much digging of beds. Vinnie the vixen kept watch for scraps of cheese.
Four 190ml jars of home-made, organic Andhra tomato pickle, estimated sale value £4.50 per jar, total plot tally for the week £18.
P.S. Vinnie is beautiful.
How wonderful, growing your own hops, and making and drinking your own beer 🍺 excellent.