Grow your own way

It’s unsurprising that such a rich community has sprung up around Hogs Back, given its unique charm and the fact that it’s keeping local beer traditions alive without feeling in the least bit old fashioned. For instance, the brewery itself is as quirky as the building it’s based in, but also features a pilot kit that’s run on 100% solar energy. “If you were to build a brewery from scratch there’s no way you’d build it like ours,” says Jill. “Nothing is flat, nothing is straight, and we’ve squeezed something into every available bit of space we’ve got. Our brewing process is very manual, with someone still having to climb inside the mash tun to dig out the spent grain, which then goes to local farmers for animal feed. ”

It’s quite remarkable to think that, alongside this old, traditional setup, the brewery had 120 solar panels installed in 2023. These power a smaller kit that runs separately to the main brewery and produces beers for Hogs Back’s subsidiary brand, One Planet, for which every beer is 100% solar brewed. Currently, One Planet beers are only sold in the brewery shop and taproom, in Tongham and haven’t reached the wide trade yet. “We also brew Hogs Back beers on that kit, as it’s given us much more room to experiment. Our main plant operates a 40-barrel brew, but that’s quite a lot of beer to sell if we’re trying something new, so on the pilot kit we can make much smaller batches of about 20 or 30 casks or kegs.”

Speaking of the main kit, I’m tickled to learn that 33 years on, Tongham TEA, the brewery’s traditional English ale and the first beer ever brewed by its original owner, is still its flagship beer. Many beers in the rest of the range are riffs on this name — Aromas Over Tongham is a 9% barley wine, Old Tongham Tasty is a black ale, Green TEA is an annually brewed green-hopped beer. Many of the beers in this brewery’s range have stood the test of time and, in fact, map out the story of its evolution over the years. 

“Rupert Thompson, who's our current owner, joined 15 years ago, and saw great potential in the brewery,” says Jill. “That was before the big craft revolution, and the rise of micro breweries. But he added a lager to our range and he introduced us to Thatchers, another family-owned business. So, using our recipe for Hazy Hog, they produce our cider for us. Over the years we’ve also embraced keg beer, and today brew an alcohol-free beer called Little Swine, so we have moved with changing consumer tastes”

Rupert is also responsible for starting the brewery’s 8.5-acre hop garden which, on a good year, produces 50% of the hops used by the brewery annually. Primarily, the site grows Fuggles, English Cascade, and the heritage variety, Farnham White Bine. “Farnham used to be one of the preeminent centres of hop growing in the UK before it went to Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Kent, and Farnham White Bine was the local hop,” says Jill. 

“It's quite delicate by modern standards, but there was once a time when you could walk from Farnham all the way down to Alton just passing through hop garden after hop garden. That's all gone now; there are only two hop gardens left in Surrey; ours and one down the road at the Hampton Estate in Puttenham.”

Hampton’s actually helped Hogs Back set up its original hop garden, before it had to be moved to its current site, due to the original land going up for sale. Today an agronomist consults on the project to ensure it stays on the right track, but aside from that, the Hogs Back team and a legion of volunteers man the garden, with the latter coming into its own during harvest season. 

“We've got a group of about 80 volunteers called The Hogs Back Hoppers. This started during the pandemic when, because of social distancing, people were feeling a little bit isolated,” says Jill. “But, we had the hop garden, so it made perfect sense for people to come along, spread themselves out in the eight and a half acres, and meet like minded people while helping out in the hop garden in exchange for some beer. We had people come from all walks of life; former engineers, former brewers, horticulturalists, people with no connection to beer whatsoever, some people who lived just down the road who just wanted to come and help. They all muck in and they drive the tractors, do the picking; even the tough part, when it's cold and wet in February, they're out there. So that's a really brilliant community that we've got there and without its help we wouldn't be able to grow our own hops.”

Jill says that every year after harvest the brewery throws a party, partially because in the olden days, families used to come down from London to work in the hop fields over the summer. At the end of their contract, after harvest, they’d be paid, and have a proper party before heading back up to the city. This summer, Hogs Back’s celebration attracted a whopping 4,000 people over the course of a weekend, with live music and food prepared in-house. It also brews a green beer every year, with hops walked from the fields to the brewhouse for use on the day they’re picked. 

Tongham is a long way from Dublin, where I’m from, but in Irish there is an old saying “Ar mhuin na music”, that I think of throughout my conversation with Jill. It roughly translates as “on the pig’s back” — close enough to Hogs Back — and refers to a time of prosperity or good fortune. So, if someone is on the pig’s back, life is treating them well. Though the brewing industry is a challenging environment in which to operate at the moment, and cask beer, the beating heart of Hogs Back, is struggling, this little corner of Surrey seems, in spite of all odds, to be on the pig’s back.