The Evolution of The Hop Shed
By Sarah Saleh. The Hop Shed Founder
This month it will be 10 years since we did the first brew in our shiny new brewery in The Old Chicken Shed in Suckley, so it feels like a good time to do a bit of reflection on where our journey started and how far we have come in those 10 years.
The idea of starting our own brewery only originated a year or so earlier, in 2015 when Hani and I were living in South London. Hani was working in financial services, and I was teaching part time and bringing up our 2 very young children. Both of us were becoming increasingly disillusioned with our jobs and it felt like we were becoming 2 people living separate lives in the same house, so we made the brave, or maybe stupid decision – there is a fine line I think, to start a business together. It was our common love of beer that inspired us to start our own brewery.
Although we knew a lot about drinking beer, we knew nothing about making it so my journey in learning how to brew began. Having undertaken training, I began brewing in the garage in London and creating recipes. I handed in my notice and started working on a business plan. Within 6 months, Hani had also handed his notice in, and we had accepted an offer on our house. We had identified Worcestershire / Herefordshire as a good location to set up a brewery due to the hop growing here and the fact it would be a beautiful place to live. In December 2015 we moved to Alfrick – a lovely welcoming village, which became increasingly welcoming as people learnt the reason for our move! In the following 10 months we found a site on Stocks Farm, got all necessary permissions, completed alterations to the building, installed our custom-made brew house and did our first brew.
We originally named the business The Unity Brewhouse as Hani and I would be working together in the business, but beer also has a way of bringing people together in social settings, so the name was also our aim – to use beer to bring unity. Little did we know how significant a part of our business this would become here in Suckley! We could never have imagined when we moved, we would have the amazing good fortune to be brewing on a hop farm and in early 2017 we realised we should make more of being the only brewery on a commercial hop farm (at that time!) so we changed the name to The Hop Shed to highlight our USP.
Initially it was just Hani and I in the business, doing everything between us with the ‘help’ of our 2 young children! Gradually we built a small team, so Hani was able to leave the business in January 2020 when he accepted an offer to work on a project back in London for 6 months. He found he enjoyed being back in the corporate world so that is where he has stayed since – working between home and London for the last 6 years. There are now 4 of us working full time, 2 part time and a fabulous group of casual bar staff! The brewery has grown from being a 10BBL brew house with 2 fermenters to now having 3 fermenters and a conditioning tank so when brewing at capacity we can now produce 7,750 pints per week!
As I mentioned earlier, bringing Unity was one of the aims of our business and the Tap Room has far surpassed any expectations we could have had for this aspect of what we have created! The Tap Room began life in November 2016 as a very sparse affair with a small bar with 2 hand pulls, no furniture, no heating and a very limited drinks offering! I’m sure some of you will remember the days of piles of pallets for seating and huddling under the one small heater we quickly had to install! Gradually the word spread about this strange place in the middle of nowhere and more people started coming along, we added more hand pulls, bought some furniture, installed more heating and increased the range of local drinks we served and started monthly food nights which increased to weekly and more recently, now include Saturdays as well. Although the main business of The Hop Shed is producing beer and selling it to trade, for me, the best part of the business is The Tap Room – the community that has developed here is fabulous. I love seeing people come together and enjoy our beer in each other’s company. Regulars and visitors alike are welcomed, and it is a fabulous way for people who have moved into the area to become part of the local community.
There isn’t often time to look back and reflect on the journey we’ve been on, as running a Brewery and Tap Room alongside a busy family is all consuming, but it has been good to look back and realise there is a lot to be proud of – all the awards we have won for our beers, the community we have created here, our TV and radio appearances and the fact that we have survived so many unbelievable challenges in the last 10 years and I feel very fortunate that we are still here when many other breweries and pubs are not. We have a lot to celebrate so we will be having a 10th Birthday party on Friday 30th October, and we hope you will be able to join us!
