AUSFest Manchester Recap: Australian Hops Brewers Should Try

We sent our Inside Sales Manager Dale Deakin (AKA The Man Behind the Phone/Email) to the first of the BarthHaas® x HPA x Loughran Brewers Select ‘AUSFest’ Roadshow events in Manchester. Here’s how he got on:

Dale Deakin, Loughran Brewers Select Inside Sales Manager

As a Sheffield lad living in Newry, Northern Ireland, I never turn down the opportunity to head back to the North of England, especially if there are a few pints with brewers involved.

In my day job at Loughran Brewers Select, I’m usually on the end of an email or the phone chatting away to all of you, but it’s rare that I’m able to head out to breweries and events and meet people ‘IRL’ as the kids say. Speaking of kids, my lot (aged 5, 7, and 9) keep my pretty busy when I’m not in the office!

So when I heard we were teaming up with BarthHaas® and HPA to put together an Aussie hops roadshow—and that one of the stops was Manchester—I basically bit their hand off.

AUSFest Australian Hops Roadshow

Before I get carried away with the day itself, I should probably explain what AUSFest actually is.

We’re lucky to work pretty closely with BarthHaas® – selling their flowables and advanced hop products like SPECTRUM, and now LupoMAX®, as well as the all-important Citra® and Mosaic® T90 pellets, and brewing aids made from hop products too. We sell a big range here in Ireland too, as well as partnering together on logistics here too.

One area we really do a lot with BartHaas® is Australian hops from Hop Products Australia (HPA). Galaxy® in particular – you’ll all know that one. Truth be told, Aussie hops were how we first started working with BarthHaas in the UK.

Australian Hops can get slept on a bit compared to the big US hop varieties, so when the idea came up to give them their own spotlight, we were all for it.

The plan was simple – lay on 3 events for brewers – in Manchester, Bristol, and London, and a hops roadshow celebrating hops from HPA in Australia. We’d lay on beers, a hop sensory session, exclusive merch (now I’ve got your attention!) a deep dive into everything you really need to know about the Australian hop industry, as well as live music. The star(s) of the show though (as well as our lovely Loughran lot and the BarthHaas® team – and the hops of course) would be the beers.

UK & Aussie Breweries Showcasing Australian Hops

We wanted to properly show what Australian hops could do for beers, so alongside BarthHaas® (big shout-out to Iain Clarke here!) we lined up six collabs with UK and Aussie breweries. The (ambitious) goal would be a nationwide launch of half a dozen AUSFest beers from different sized breweries around the UK, partnered with Australian craft brewers, and pouring not only at the AUSFest roadshows, but also distributing to venues throughout the country via wholesalers Pivovar. You can learn more about the breweries on our dedicated AUSFest page, but here’s a quick run-down:

Mason Brewing Co. x Aether Brewing ‘Defying Gravity’ 8.2% DIPA ft. BarthHaas® Full Flavour SPECTRUM Enigma®, & HPA BarthHaas® Galaxy® T90

Saint Monday x Young Henrys ‘Eclipse Pils’ 4% ft. HPA BarthHaas® Eclipse®

Closet Brewing x Bright Brewery ‘Live Outside’ West Coast Pale 5.6% ft. HPA BarthHaas® Galaxy® & Vic Secret™

Northern Monk x Bridge Road Brewers ‘Lake District’ 6.2% Australian Mountain IPA ft. HPA BarthHaas® Eclipse®, Enigma®, & HPA BarthHaas® Luna®, with BarthHaas® Spectrum Enigma®, and Citra® & Mosaic® in BarthHaas LupoCORE Enhanced Pellets

BEAK x Future Brewing ‘Sunrise’ IPA 6.5% ft. HPA BarthHaas® Enigma® & Galaxy®

Moor Beer X Mountain Goat ‘So’Hop X’ 5% Australian Pale Ale ft. HPA BarthHaas® Galaxy®, Eclipse®, & Ella™

Manchester Breweries: Seven Bro7hers & Pomona Island

I landed into a very sunny red-hot Manchester (not something you can always say!) for the first leg of the AUSFest roadshow at Northern Monk’s Manchester Refectory. Before that though, I wanted to pay a visit to one of my favourite customers! Rob picked me up from the train station and we shot straight over to Seven Bro7hers, where we met Jack, who was an absolute great host. He gave us a tour of the brewery, and I spotted some nice Indie hops stickers on the tanks. Jack’s a big fan of Indie Hops Strata®, and has been going great guns with this hop of late. We tried some ‘Easy IPA’ which is now on a huge nationwide distro, and I’ve got to say it was tasting great! We chatted hops as always, but I always like to remind any of the brewers I speak to that we can help sort them out with other ingredients too, and not just malt, and yeast, but adjuncts like maltodextrin and rice hulls too, as well as KeyKegs and UniKegs. Anything which makes life easier for you by sticking as many ingredients as possible all on one pallet. I was dead chuffed to see Jack wearing his Loughran Carhartt jumper too. If he keeps giving me lovely beers to try each time I visit, he’ll be well on his way to earning himself some more merch in my book!

We popped right across the road to see the lads at Pomona Island, who’ve been busy with their flagship pub North Westward Ho in the City Centre. Gaz and the lads at Pomona are trialling some BESTMALZ BEST Heidelberg malt at the moment, and they’re really liking how it’s going for them.

There was a bit of time to kill after we’d dropped off the car and got a bus to the city centre, so it would have been rude not to swing by Fell Northern Quarter for a swift pint.

AUSFest Manchester at Northern Monk MCR Refectory

Just before kick-off, we hopped round the corner to Northern Monk’s Manchester Refectory who were kindly hosted the AUSFest roadshow for us. Lovely spot for it too – great building. We walked in and who was the first person to greet us? It was Brian from Northern Monk! We had a great catch up with Brian and Cat, chatting greyhounds – Danny (an ex-racer) was playing a starring role as always, and I’ve got a racing greyhound myself!

Excitement was building before the start of the roadshow, helped in no small part to the goodie bags full of merch being handed out. I had my eye on the limited edition AUSFest hats myself, but I had to make do with the beers – apparently ‘customers have first dibs on the merch’. I’ll have a word about that next time!

I thoroughly enjoyed ticking off the beers from the tap list – as well as our six collab beers, we’d also laid on a couple of iconic core range beers brewed using Aussie hops in Thornbridge’s ‘Green Mountain’ (Galaxy®, paired with Mosaic®, Citra®, and Amarillo®) and Rooster’s ‘Little Hazy Assassin’ (Galaxy®, Citra®, and Mosaic®). I had a good chinwag with Sean from Sureshot, Freddie from Courier, and Lally from Love Lane, then it was time for the main event. Back to school to learn more about Aussie hops from John Willetts of BarthHaas®…

Quality of Australian Hops Increasing Thanks to HPA

The lads at John I. Haas in the US have a world class sensory panel led by Jeff Dailey, and they’ve partnered with HPA for the last 4 years on bale intake to exclude bales which don’t meet sensory targets for pellets. Compared to the global hop industry, HPA is unique in growing so many of Australia’s hops, and they’re vertically integrated – with a special understanding of their own proprietary varieties. There’s a level of quality control across cultivation and growing, through to processing, packaging and sales.

So, what did this mean I learned about Galaxy® specifically? Bales of Galaxy® are very sensitive to degrading, so HPA has taken a decision here to not offer specific lot selection on Galaxy® as this drastically slows up processing time, leading to worse hops. Instead, they analyse the whole of the crop and blend to create the lowest possible flavour variability and true-to-type expression of the hop. The logic here is that by blending and not offering selection, ALL Galaxy® hops from HPA are going to be top notch, guaranteeing consistency. HPA have been pretty brave here. I know from Oregon that brewers love hop selection, but I can also see HPA’s logic. We’re all busy, and under a lot of commercial pressure to produce beers that our customers love to drink. When you come up with a great recipe that’s popular, and is reliant on a hop like Galaxy®, then the last thing you want to be worried about is it tasting different next time you have a different lot of Galaxy®. It takes an element of the risk and unknown out of things, and I think we can all get on board with that.

John talked us through the new HPA pellet facility too which now processes all HPA bales, allowing them process hop bales quickly – now processing their entire crop in under 55 days – resulting in a higher percentage of essential oils retained in the finished hop pellets at a lower average HSI (Hop Storage Index – ie lower hop oxidation). There’s loads of checks and balances in the process too, with rigorous QC on hop samples as well as sensory analysis too. HPA are pretty open about their processes (nothing dodgy here) and they’re always keen for brewers to take a trip down to Victoria during harvest to get a good idea of the production process and see how the whole thing shakes down.

Galaxy® Hop Chemistry for Brewing

HPA must be onto something, because not only were all the Galaxy® beers I had tasting great, and the hops smelling good too, but John also showed us a graph from HPA’s own lab sensory scores based on human sensory and analytics. It showed that from 2023 onwards, Galaxy® has significantly improved its score for ‘true-to-type’ flavour, with a lot less variance.

We took a nerdy deep dive on Galaxy® from a chemical perspective too (luckily with no test at the end), but I was glad we’d partnered with BarthHaas® to hand out some snazzy notebooks so I could get some notes down. As a hop, Galaxy® has a uniquely high proportion of monoterpenes, almost to the exclusion of sesquiterpenes (definitely didn’t spell that one right in my notes!) and diterpenes. What does this mean? Well, a monoterpene-dominant oil profile means there are high levels of linalool/geraniol which create intense, bright aromatics (think passionfruit, peach, citrus) with minimal interference from sesquiterpene, and this all gives clean, punchy hop expression. Galaxy®’s consistently high oils (around 3ml/100g) delivers more “bang for ya bucks” – as my boss Will Avery might say – i.e. a little goes a long way. Getting really technical, Galaxy® also has biotransformation potential, with thiol potential for nice tropical notes too – which you can unlock nicely by using a yeast like Lallemand LalBrew® Verdant IPA™ Yeast, or even LalBrew® New England™ American East Coast Ale Yeast.

Australian Hop Harvest 2026

We got a potted history of the other HPA proprietary varieties, as well as insights into this year’s harvest too. Couple of points from my snazzy notebook:

Ella™

• developed in Victoria from pollen collected in Tasmania, from a male descended from Spalter.
• Another high oil hop.
• Nice crop year for Ella™ – it started well after good spring growing conditions.

Vic Secret™

• Farmers love growing this one
• HPA’s second biggest variety – and it’s still growing!
• Vic Secret™ Grew nicely in Victoria, despite some flooding

Enigma®

• Only grown in Tasmania
• Slow growth from cooler weather, slightly below average yield.
• Enigma® was bang on point for hop flavour/aroma compounds (metabolites) so expect true-to-type expressions this year in pellets.

Eclipse®

• High alpha Aussie and North American heritage.
• Eclipse® was actually initially HPA’s second choice against another experimental hop, but brewers totally fell in love with it.
• Slightly subdued growth from a cool summer, but the plants were still good and healthy with true-to-type expression, and yield expectations met.

Topaz™

• Bred from Galaxy®’s mother.
• Red grapefruit flavours here – more rounded and sweeter than yellow grapefruit
• Topaz™ is always reliable agronomically.

Luna®

• The new kid on the block – and I gave some a rub in the hop sensory session and it was smelling great!
• Matures early which is handy for growers.
• High polyphenol content in Luna increases flavour structuring and palate weight, enhancing perceived hop intensity and contributing a fuller, slightly grippy mouthfeel alongside aroma compounds.
• Supply is going to be tight for a few years as it becomes established – it only launched commercially in 2026!

Top Australian Hops Brewers Should Be Using

What really struck me was that Australian hops are in a better place these days than they were a few years ago – both in terms of quality and availability in market thanks to the work of HPA and BarthHaas® (and we at Loughran Brewers Select will take a bit of credit too!). After the presentation, I got stuck into the hop sensory, and then the band got playing. We were plenty of drinks in by then, so it was a good evening! Rob was propping up the bar as per, and we were having some great craic with the folks from Barneys, Cold Town, and Cloudwater.  My key takeaway from the evening (apart from a bit of a headache the next morning!) was the breadth and quality of beers on show, not only in terms of showcasing Australian hops in entirely Aussie hop focused beers, but also how nicely Australian hops can play alongside the heavy US hop hitters like Citra® and Mosaic® in the Northern Monk x Bridge Road ‘Lake District Australian Mountain IPA’ (Eclipse® and Enigma®, as well as SPECTRUM Enigma®, and Citra® and Mosaic®), or Thornbridge ‘Green Mountain’ or Rooster’s ‘Little Hazy Assassin’ (both with Galaxy®, Citra®, and Mosaic®).

Is it Time To Revisit Aussie Hops?

I had a mega day in Manchester, and I’m grateful to everyone who attended and made it such a great night, as well as all those brewers who got involved in the collabs to produce those showcase beers. I’m thankful we work in an industry that has really good fun events like the AUSFest roadshow, and I’m looking forward to the next roadshow or beer festival I get to hit the road for.

As I headed towards Manchester Piccadilly for my train to the airport on Friday morning, I had time to stick my head in the railway arch at Sureshot and say goodbye to the team there. They kindly gave me a couple of train beers of their core pale ‘Milson’, and it tasted great as always. As I spun the label around, I read through the hops:

Galaxy®

Citra®

Mosaic®

Says it all really…