Wild Hops Brewing: How to Find, Pick & Brew Green Hops
Wild hops brewing is one of the most rewarding seasonal projects a homebrewer can try. Every autumn, hop bines growing in hedgerows across the UK produce fresh cones that can be foraged and used to create unique beers with a character that’s impossible to replicate at any other time of year.
These freshly picked cones are often referred to as green hops or wet hops. Unlike the dried hops you buy from a homebrew shop, green hops are used straight from the bine without being processed first. That fresh-from-the-field character is what makes green hop brewing so distinctive.
In this guide, we’ll look at where to find wild hops, how to identify when they’re ready to pick, and how to use them in your brewing. We’ll also cover the practical side of brewing with green hops, including how much to use, when to add them, and the techniques that helped us turn a handful of foraged hops into a finished beer.
What Is Wild Hop Brewing?
Wild hop brewing is the process of making beer with hops that have been foraged rather than commercially grown and harvested.
While most brewing hops are grown on commercial hop farms and trained up tall strings or poles, wild hops can be found growing naturally throughout the UK. As a climbing plant, hops often weave their way through hedgerows, using surrounding vegetation for support and helping create habitats for birds, insects and other wildlife.
When these hops are picked and used fresh, they’re known as green hops or wet hops. Rather than being dried and packaged like traditional brewing hops, they go straight from the bine into the brewery.
The result is a different expression of hop character. Green hops can bring fresh floral, herbal and grassy aromas that are difficult to achieve with processed hops, making them particularly popular during hop harvest season.
It’s also a great excuse to get out for a walk. If you’re lucky enough to find a healthy patch of wild hops nearby, you could have a source of free brewing ingredients much closer to home than you think.
Can You Use Wild Hops to Make Beer?
Yes, you can use wild hops to make beer, and brewers have been doing exactly that for centuries.
One of the interesting things about brewing with wild hops is that you often won’t know the exact variety you’re working with. Unlike commercial hops, there’s no packaging telling you the alpha acid percentage, oil content or expected flavour profile. Instead, you’re working with whatever nature has provided.
For that reason, wild hops are usually best treated as a flavour and aroma ingredient rather than a bittering addition. Without knowing the alpha acid content, it’s difficult to predict how much bitterness they will contribute to the finished beer.
Quick Answer: Wild Hops Brewing
- Yes, wild hops can be used to make beer.
- They are best used for flavour and aroma rather than bittering.
- Pick ripe cones between late August and September.
- Use around 5x the weight of green hops compared to dried hops.
- Add them at flameout or around 80°C for the best results.
In our own wild hop brew, we used a measured bittering addition separately and then added the foraged hops later in the process, allowing them to contribute their fresh hop character without relying on them for bitterness.
The key is starting with good-quality hop cones. In the next sections, we’ll look at where to find wild hops, how to identify them correctly and how to tell when they’re ready to pick.
Where Do Wild Hops Grow in the UK?
Wild hops grow throughout England, but they are most commonly found in and around traditional hop-growing regions such as:
- Herefordshire
- Worcestershire
- Kent
They can also be found much further afield, including parts of Wales and Scotland, as well as many areas that have never had a commercial hop industry.
In the wild, hops grow as climbing plants, using hedgerows, trees and other vegetation for support rather than the strings and poles used on commercial hop farms. This makes them surprisingly easy to overlook until the hop cones begin to develop.
How to Find Green Hops for Brewing in the UK
If you’re looking for wild hops for brewing, late summer is a good time to start scouting locations. Look for vigorous climbing bines growing through hedgerows, then revisit them during hop harvest season when the cones have matured.
Once you know what you’re looking for, you’ll often start spotting wild hops in hedgerows, woodland edges and field boundaries that you’ve walked past for years without noticing.
When to Pick Hops for Beer
The best time to pick hops for beer is usually between late August and September, although the exact timing depends on the weather and your location.
Rather than relying on the calendar, it’s better to look at the hop cones themselves. As they ripen, their appearance, texture and aroma all begin to change, giving you a much better indication of when they’re ready for brewing.
Signs Your Hops Are Ready to Pick
Ripe hop cones should:
- Feel light and slightly papery
- Spring back when squeezed
- Have a noticeable sticky or oily residue
- Release a pleasant floral, herbal or citrus aroma when rubbed
- Show yellow lupulin inside the cone
One of the easiest checks is the “crunch test”. A ripe cone should feel slightly crunchy, almost like a packet of crisps being gently squeezed. If the cone still feels soft, damp or overly green, it may need a little more time on the bine.
Signs Your Hops Are Not Ready Yet
If the cones are not fully mature, you may notice:
- A strong grassy aroma
- Very little stickiness when rubbed
- Soft, dense cones that don’t spring back
- Pale or underdeveloped lupulin
These hops can still be picked, but they’re unlikely to deliver the same flavour and aroma character as fully ripened cones.
Can Wild Hops Become Overripe?
Yes. If you’ve left it too late, the aroma will often tell you first. Overripe wild hops can develop onion, garlic or overly savoury characteristics that most brewers would rather avoid.
The sweet spot sits between those two extremes: not grassy and under-ripe, but not oniony and over-mature either. When the cones feel slightly crunchy, leave your fingers sticky and smell bright and inviting, it’s usually time to start picking.
How to Identify Wild Hop Cones
Wild hops are easiest to identify once the hop cones have formed. These are the layered, papery flowers from the female hop plant — the part brewers actually want for beer brewing.
Male hop plants do not produce the same tight cones, so they can be ignored for brewing purposes. What you’re looking for are healthy cone clusters growing from a climbing bine, usually twisting through a hedge or surrounding vegetation.
A few useful identification checks:
- Look for layered cones – hop cones are made up of overlapping bracts, almost like small green pine cones
- Check the bine – hops climb and twist through hedges, trees and other vegetation rather than growing as a freestanding bush
- Look for cone clusters – female hop plants produce the cone-shaped flowers used in brewing
How to Identify Wild Hop Varieties
You may also be able to spot certain UK varieties by looking at the colour of the bine and petioles.
- Fuggles: can have a green bine with red petioles
- Goldings: may show distinct red “pinstriping” on the petioles
That said, wild hops can include older varieties, natural hybrids and crossbreeds, so it’s usually best to embrace not knowing exactly what you’ve found. For brewing purposes, ripeness and aroma are often more important than identifying the exact variety.
What Plants Can Be Mistaken for Wild Hops?
The biggest safety note is white bryony. If you see small red berries on something that looks a bit like a hop bine, do not harvest it. White bryony is poisonous and should be left alone.
When picking, aim for the hop cones themselves and avoid taking too much thick branch or leafy material. A few small stems are fine, but the cones are what you really want in the brew.
How to Brew With Green Hops
Green hops are best used quickly after picking, while they are still fresh, aromatic and full of moisture. Unlike dried hops or pellets, they have not been processed or concentrated, so they behave a little differently in the brewing process.
One of the challenges with wild hops brewing is that you won’t know the alpha acid content of the hops you’ve picked. Commercial hops are tested so brewers can calculate bitterness accurately, but that’s not something most homebrewers can do with foraged hops.
For that reason, we generally recommend treating wild hops as a flavour and aroma addition rather than relying on them for bittering.
When Should You Add Green Hops?
Because the bitterness potential is unknown, green hops are usually best added later in the brewing process, where they can contribute flavour and aroma without needing to provide a specific bitterness level.
Good options include:
- Flameout additions
- Whirlpool additions
- A hot steep at around 80°C
This approach helps preserve delicate hop oils and allows more of the fresh, seasonal character to make it into the finished beer.
In our own wild hop brew, we used FLEX at the start of the boil to provide a predictable bittering addition, before adding the freshly picked hops at around 80°C.
How Much Green Hops Should You Use?
As a rule of thumb, you’ll need around five times the weight of green hops compared to dried hops.
For example:
- 100g dried whole cone hops = approximately 500g green hops
- 200g dried whole cone hops = approximately 1kg green hops
Pellets are normally more concentrated than dried whole hops, but green hops can still be substituted at roughly the same 1:5 ratio. The freshness of the green hops helps make up for the difference in concentration.
Green Hop Brewing Tips
Adding several hundred grams of whole hop cones to your brewery can create a few practical challenges.
The biggest one is blockage. Large quantities of green hops can clog valves, pumps and pipework, particularly on all-in-one brewing systems.
A few simple ways to manage this are:
- Use a filter on your valve outlet
- Contain the hops in a large grain bag
- Use a hop spider where possible
- On systems like the Grainfather, repurpose the grain basket as a giant hop spider after the mash
These approaches make cleanup easier and reduce the risk of blockages during transfer.
Which Beer Styles Work Best With Green Hops?
You can use green hops in almost any beer style, but we think wild UK hops tend to shine in traditional British beers.
They work particularly well in:
- Golden ales
- Best bitters
- ESBs
- Celebration ales
For our wild hop brew, we chose a traditional British-style Celebration Ale, using Maris Otter, biscuit and aromatic malt as the base. The fresh hedgerow hops complemented the bready malt character beautifully and produced a beer that felt very much in keeping with the British hop harvest season.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you could also lean into the hedgerow theme and pair your wild hops with foraged fruit such as blackberries, sloes or wild plums.
What We Learned From Brewing a Green Hopped Beer
In our wild hop beer, we wanted a beer that would let the green hops come through without burying them under too much malt, yeast character or modern dry hop intensity.
We brewed a traditional British-style Celebration Ale, sitting somewhere close to an ESB, with a simple malt bill built around:
- 90% Maris Otter
- 5% Biscuit Malt
- 5% Aromatic Malt
That gave the beer a solid bready backbone while still leaving plenty of room for the fresh hop character to show through.
What surprised us most was just how much of that character survived the brewing process. The floral aroma and sticky resin we noticed when picking the hops carried through into the finished beer, creating something that felt distinctly seasonal and different from a beer brewed with standard dried hops.
The biggest lesson was that you don’t need to overcomplicate green hop brewing. By using a known bittering addition and letting the foraged hops focus on flavour and aroma, the process becomes much more predictable while still retaining the excitement of working with a completely unknown ingredient.
Perhaps that’s what makes brewing a green hopped beer so enjoyable. Every harvest is different, every hedgerow is different and every batch tells a slightly different story. You’re not trying to brew the same beer year after year — you’re capturing a snapshot of that particular hop harvest.
Served through a beer engine, our finished beer felt exactly like the kind of beer that should exist for hop harvest season: local, seasonal and just a little bit experimental, which is half the fun.
FAQs: Green Hops Brewing
Can you freeze green hops before brewing?
Yes, you can freeze green hops, but they are always best used fresh if possible.
Green hops contain a lot of moisture, so freezing can change their texture and may dull some of that just-picked aromatic profile. If you do need to freeze them, bag them up as soon as possible after picking, remove as much air as you can, and use them sooner rather than treating them like long-term stored dried hops.
For the best green hop beer, aim to pick and brew on the same day.
How long do green hops stay fresh after picking?
Ideally, green hops should be used on the same day they are picked. That’s when you’ll get the brightest aroma and the freshest hop character in the finished beer.
That said, they don’t suddenly become unusable after a few hours. If kept cool, dry and well ventilated, most green hops will remain in good condition for around 24–48 hours after harvest. Beyond that, you’ll often notice the aroma starting to fade and the cones becoming less vibrant. Because green hops contain so much moisture, they simply don’t have the shelf life of dried hops or pellets.
If you’ve spent the afternoon foraging, don’t panic if brew day is tomorrow. Just avoid leaving the hops compressed in a warm bucket, bag or car boot overnight. Spread them out somewhere cool and aim to get them into the kettle as soon as practical.
Can you dry wild hops for future brews?
Yes. If you’ve picked more hops than you can use immediately, drying them is a practical way to preserve them for future brewing projects. While commercial hop producers use specialist equipment, homebrewers can achieve good results with a few simple methods.
A food dehydrator is often the easiest option, as it provides gentle, consistent airflow to remove moisture without overheating the hops. For very small harvests, an air fryer with a dehydrator setting can also work well. Alternatively, many homebrewers use a more DIY approach by spreading hops in thin layers across netting or a clothes drying rack and running a dehumidifier underneath to help draw out moisture.
Whichever method you choose, the goal is to dry the cones slowly and evenly while preserving as much aroma as possible. Once fully dried, store them in airtight bags or containers away from heat, light and oxygen. Keep in mind that home-dried hops are unlikely to retain their character as well as commercially processed hops, so they’re generally best used within a few months rather than being stored long term.
Is it legal to forage wild hops in the UK?
You can forage wild hops in the UK, but only where you have the right to pick them.
Don’t pick from private land without permission, and avoid damaging hedgerows, fences or surrounding plants. If hops are growing on public access routes, only take a sensible amount and leave plenty behind for wildlife and for the plant to keep growing.
What does lupulin look like inside a hop cone?
Lupulin is the yellow powdery substance found inside a hop cone. If you’ve ever heard brewers talk about the “brewer’s gold” hidden inside hops, this is what they’re referring to.
To find it, gently pull apart a ripe hop cone and look towards the base of the bracts. You should see small yellow deposits that look a little like pollen. This is where many of the oils, resins and aroma compounds used in brewing are concentrated.
The more mature the hop cone, the easier the lupulin is usually to spot. Alongside the visual check, it will often leave your fingers slightly sticky and release a pleasant hop aroma when rubbed.
For wild hops brewing, lupulin is one of the best indicators that a cone is approaching peak ripeness. If the cones contain plenty of bright yellow lupulin and smell inviting, you’re usually on the right track for harvesting and brewing.
Do wild hops taste different from commercial hops?
Yes. Commercial hop varieties have been selected and cultivated over many generations to emphasise specific brewing characteristics, whether that’s high alpha acids for bittering, intense tropical fruit aromas or a particular flavour profile. Brewers know roughly what to expect when they buy varieties such as Citra, Goldings or Fuggles because those traits have been deliberately preserved and developed over time.
Wild hops are different. They haven’t been grown, selected or tested with brewing in mind, so their flavour can vary enormously from one plant to the next.
In many cases, wild hops can be less intense than modern commercial varieties. That’s not necessarily because they’re lower quality, but because they often haven’t been bred to maximise oil content, aroma intensity or bitterness. Modern hop breeding programmes spend years selecting plants that produce more of the compounds brewers value most.
What wild hops often offer instead is character. Depending on where they’re growing and when they’re picked, you might find floral, herbal, grassy, earthy or lightly citrus notes that feel very different from the punchy tropical flavours associated with many modern craft beer hops.
That’s why we tend to think of wild hops as a seasonal ingredient rather than a direct replacement for commercial varieties. The appeal isn’t consistency – it’s discovering what that particular hedgerow has to offer.
What is the difference between wild hops, green hops and wet hops?
The terms are often used together, but they describe slightly different things.
- Wild hops refers to where the hops came from — they were foraged rather than commercially cultivated.
- Green hops refers to hops that are used fresh after harvest rather than being dried.
- Wet hops means essentially the same thing as green hops and highlights the fact that the hops still contain all of their natural moisture.
In modern brewing, green hops and wet hops are usually used interchangeably. That means a beer brewed with freshly picked hedgerow hops could accurately be described as:
- A wild hop beer
- A green hopped beer
- A wet hopped beer
The important thing is that the hops have gone from the bine to the brewery without being dried first, helping preserve the fresh, seasonal character that makes harvest-time brewing so unique.
What You’ll Need for Wild Hop Brewing
If this guide has inspired you to try brewing with wild hops, there are a few products and ingredients that can make the process easier. From building a simple recipe to handling large quantities of green hops, having the right setup can save a lot of hassle on brew day.
- Brewing Malt: For our wild hop brew, we built the recipe around Maris Otter. Its bready, biscuity character works particularly well with the floral and herbal notes often found in wild UK hops.
- Brewing Yeast: Traditional British yeast strains allow the malt and hop character to shine through without dominating the finished beer. They’re a natural fit for green hopped beers, bitters, golden ales and ESBs.
- Hop Extracts & Aroma Oils: If you’re brewing with unknown wild hops, products such as FLEX, INCOGNITO, SPECTRUM and PRYSMA can provide a predictable bittering or flavour addition while allowing the foraged hops to contribute their unique seasonal character.
- Grain Bags & Hop Management: Green hops take up a lot of space in the kettle. Grain bags, hop spiders and other hop containment methods can help reduce blockages and make cleanup much easier after brew day.
- Brewing Equipment: Whether you’re brewing on a Grainfather, BrewZilla or a more traditional setup, having reliable equipment makes experimenting with seasonal ingredients much more enjoyable.
