How Australia’s Best Hop Farm Just Got Better

To get to Bemboka you must travel on a road that sways through a sea of toiled green hills, passing towns where old school isn’t an aesthetic choice, it’s just how things look. It’s all too fitting that my destination is a revenant of simpler times: an independent, family-run hop farm.

“You got to really rub it into the back of your hand,” Jade McManus, the hop farmer, says as they hand me half a freshly-picked hop cone as we tour the farm. Among the green corridor of towering hop bines, I mash the cone into the back of my hand, increasing in intensity at Jade’s insistence.

“Now smell the back of your hand.”

Jade doesn’t have to tell me twice. The aroma is a privilege to inhale. A floral hop bouquet that seems to tease me with the fact it’s not yet cold and sippable. For this hop I’ve just inhaled isn’t any ordinary hop, it’s a Ryefield hop.

My tasting technique did get better.

The above text is an excerpt from a March 2024 article I wrote for the Crafty Pint. To write it Katie and I made the six hour drive down to Marimbula where we were picked up by a courtesy bus to take us to Ryefield Hops. The Ryefield Hops team put on a first class show with an extensive farm tour, complimentary beers (brewed with their hops of course), and an absolute feast with three different kinds of fire roasted meats. Other guests included their neighbours, local wine producers and brewers from everywhere in the industry from big guys like Stone & Wood and 4 Pines, local brewers like Seeker and roving legends like Cosmo.

Also this little fella called Oreo and his mum Gab who works at Sailors Grave gave me this Lego minifigure they happened to have on them after they heard me talking about it so that was pretty sick too.

What Ryefield has achieved is amazing for independent hop producers and comes 100% from their heart as they had to make zero changes to become certified sustainable.

Read the full article on Crafty Pint so they get the ad clicks because I charged them up the wazzoo for writing such an intensive piece heeheehee

Jade amongst their laboriously managed bines. 1/3rd of the great hosting team we had that night.