It's more of a session beer, with an o.g. of about 3.8. The hops are grown in a hop garden at Hadlow Down, hence the name; it must be very near the hop garden mentioned in the travellers' song 'Hartlake Bridge' about hop-pickers being swept away in a flood. Will Duke and Dan Quinn sing it.

One of the splendid things about this day of song is the way it brings out the best in singers. There's something about the concentration and attention of singing for hours at a time which coaxes very good performances out of people; it may also have something to do with the physical exercise of joining in a lot of choruses and getting the voices throughly warmed up.

I also like the 'wild flower' effect of the singaround which means you never know quite what's coming next because the singers haven't been hand-picked. It also means that people get plenty of notice of when they are on and can regulate personal hydraulics, feeding and so on without the nagging fear that they will be overlooked if they slip out for a couple of moments.

Valmai (Lewes)