The Hoppiness Project
In the summer of 2020, I was running a gardening session for older people in a care home as part of my job with Alive Activities, a Bristol, U.K.-based charity dedicated to improving the quality of life for the elderly and their caregivers. At the end of the session, a conversation arose over a cup of tea about things we’d like to grow together in the garden. Quick as a flash, one of the residents quipped, “I’d like to grow beer!”
I didn’t realize it then, but at that moment The Hoppiness Project was born: A series of sessions to be run in care homes based around hops, pubs, brewing, and drinking culture, culminating in the production of a fresh-hopped beer.
Fast forward to a chance encounter with a researcher at the University of Bristol, which led to a proposal to take the idea wider — into care homes specifically for people living with dementia. The more we thought about it, the more it became clear that this idea had the potential to profoundly positively impact the well-being of those taking part.
The idea was pitched to the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute and a grant was secured, which included research elements exploring what older people living in care homes enjoy and want to do with their time, as well as how sensory play, socializing, reminiscence, therapeutic horticulture, giving people a sense of agency, and connecting those living in care homes to their local community can be practical therapeutic tools for residents living with dementia.
We collaborated with local community group Bristol Hops Collective — a network of hop growers across Bristol — and Left Handed Giant, a brewing company in the city, to ensure the project’s success. Left Handed Giant also hosted the care homes for a brewery tour and tasting session — an incredible experience that people talked about for weeks after!
Sessions follow the life cycle of the hop plant itself, so we begin in spring, introducing the project with a reminiscence-heavy session — photos to stimulate memories alongside other beer and pub-related memorabilia — as well as some dried hops to touch and smell. In the next session, we plant a hop rhizome and propagate more plants from cuttings. We make sessions as accessible as possible, always offering seated activities such as making hop and lavender bags. By popular request, every session ends with us sampling some beer and singing drinking songs as a group.
Through media attention we have been able to disrupt preconceptions and stereotypes around care homes and dementia — and the usually negative news cycle agenda around these things.
Alcohol plays a significant part in the lives of many adults in the U.K. There is a tendency for care home residents to be infantilized, which means they have less agency around food and drink: Talk and reminiscence about beer and pub culture offers a way of exploring different parts of people’s lives and identities without censorship.
The result of our collective efforts — Backyard Bounty, a malty 4.2% golden ale — was a hit with residents and is now on sale at pubs across the U.K.
Alive Activities looks forward to taking the project to more care homes next year, with the ultimate goal of creating a beer made exclusively with hops grown by care home residents. We’d also love to see the project recreated by others across the U.K. and even further afield; and to that end, we’ve created a downloadable practitioner’s activity pack that guides people through the process of delivering each of the sessions. It can be found on our website: https://hoppiness.blogs.bristol.ac.uk
