The Greenwich Meridian

Currently viewing images from 19 Apr 2016

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Commissioned by Greenwich’s Meantime Brewing Company, this marking was put together by Kate Lonergan (who can be seen at work in the 2015 image set). The idea was to create a mini hop farm on the Meridian. Said to have been London’s first permanent hop farm in over 100 years, it consisted of 48 hop roots planted in 12 hand-crafted wooden planters decorated by the famous street artist Xenz together with a green wooden line running on the ground along the Meridian towards the Observatory. The planting site was regrettably only temporary pending the future redevelopment of this part of the Greenwich Peninsula. As things turned out, the hop farm had a very short life. The first harvest was in 2014 and the last in 2015. During 2016, the hop farm became increasing dilapidated before being cleared from the site to make way for the Corona SunSets festival which was held on the site on 30 July. The May 2016 image set shows the hop farm shortly after the disappearance of the green meridian line.

The Hops were used to make a limited edition beer Harvest Gold with an ABV of 4.5%. Brewed by Alastair Hook, the 2015 vintage was described on the bottles as follows.

Brewed with hops grown on our Hop Farm on the Greenwich Peninsula, Harvest Gold is a deep golden colour, with caramel notes, a little malty sweetness with some ale fruitiness and a dry finish. The addition of fresh hops ensure the blackcurrant and gooseberry flavours are balanced by some bitterness and grassy notes. The decoction mashing method and malts used were influenced by Czech brewing, but the use of fresh English hops and ale yeast give this been a great depth of character.