KVB Monthly Beer Box

KVB Autumn Harvest Box

The Kent Hop Trail: September Edition

This Month: The Autumn Harvest Box
The bines are down. The season has turned. This is what Kent beer tastes like in September.

Every year, for a few days in early September, something extraordinary happens across the fields of East Kent. The hop bines, some of them fifteen feet tall, are cut, fed through picking machines, and the green cones that come out the other end go straight into the brew kettle within hours. Undried, raw, intensely aromatic. You can only do this once a year, and the beer it produces tastes like nothing else.

This box is built around that moment. Six beers from two of Kent's finest breweries, from a 3.8% hoppy pale that smells of the harvest to a 5.2% stout that tells you winter is on its way.

In between: two IPAs, a Kölsch, and one of the most storied limited-release bitters in the county. Summer just ended. This is what comes next.

The Breweries This Month

Two breweries. Both rooted deep in Kent.

Westerham Brewery have been operating just outside Westerham since 2004, reviving the recipes and methods of the old Black Eagle Brewery that closed in 1965. Their water comes from the Lower Greensand Ridge south of Westerham, their malt is Maris Otter, and every hop they use is grown in Kent. The 1965 Special Bitter Ale is their most personal beer. The Viceroy is their most decorated. The Grasshopper is where you start.

Tonbridge Brewery have been in East Peckham since 2010, brewing traditional and contemporary ales with a live yeast strain that dates to the Barclay Perkins Brewery of Southwark in 1958. Every beer is gluten free, every beer is vegan, and every beer is brewed in the middle of the county that has been growing hops longer than almost anywhere else on earth.

What's In September's Box

Grasshopper — Westerham Brewery, Westerham | Pale Ale, 3.8%
Start here. The name isn't an accident. Grasshopper is Westerham's hoppy, light-footed opener, and in September it feels exactly right. Westerham use only Kent-grown hops across their entire range, and this is the freshest, greenest expression of that philosophy. Light enough to drink in the last of the evening sun, hoppy enough to know the season has shifted. Open this one outside.

IPA — Tonbridge Brewery, East Peckham | IPA, 4.8%
The bridge. Tonbridge have been brewing in the heart of Kent's historic hop-growing country since 2010, using a yeast strain deposited in the national yeast bank in 1958 by the Barclay Perkins Brewery of Southwark. This is a straight-talking, well-crafted English IPA. Hoppy, balanced, and honest. The summer drinking habits don't have to end immediately.

Viceroy — Westerham Brewery, Westerham | English IPA, 5%
Brewed with 100% Kent-grown hops and Westerham's own heritage yeast strain. Viceroy is dry and bitter in the English tradition, not the juicy, hazy IPAs of the summer boxes, but something older and more considered. The hop is the point here, not the fruit. By the time you finish this one, you are in a different season entirely.

Das Kolner — Tonbridge Brewery, East Peckham | Kölsch, 4.3%
The wild card. Cold-conditioned and clean in the Cologne tradition, Das Kolner is the palette cleanser at the heart of this box, a moment of crispness between the IPAs and the darker beers that follow. Earthy, lightly spiced, subtly hoppy. Drink it cold, straight from the can, before the evening gets properly underway.

1965 Special Bitter Ale — Westerham Brewery, Westerham | Special Bitter, 4.8%
In 1965, the Black Eagle Brewery in Westerham closed its doors, a victim of the catastrophic consolidation that swept through British brewing in the postwar decades. Westerham Brewery was founded in 2004 specifically to revive what was lost. The 1965 Special Bitter Ale is named for that year and brewed in its memory: a rich, full-bodied special bitter that carries the flavours the Black Eagle made famous.

Velvet Raven — Tonbridge Brewery, East Peckham | Stout, 5.2%
Save this one for last. Rich toffee, liquorice, chocolate and coffee.

Tonbridge's flagship stout brewed with Northdown, Fuggle and Bullion hops and a malt bill that takes no shortcuts. This is the beer that tells you summer is definitively over. Pour it into a glass, let it settle, and drink it slowly. The Winter Dark Box arrives in December. Consider this the preview.

Drinking Order

Follow the season. Light to dark. Summer to autumn.

1. Grasshopper — Westerham, 3.8%
2. IPA — Tonbridge, 4.8%
3. Viceroy — Westerham, 5%
4. Das Kolner — Tonbridge, 4.3%
5. 1965 Special Bitter Ale — Westerham, 4.8%