Our Story

We’ve been hop suppliers for over 160 years, so we’ve got a lot of hop history.

Charles Faram Hop Merchants and Factors has one of the largest ranges of hop varieties available from stock in our temperature-controlled hop storage warehouses in nitrogen-flushed leaf hops, Type 90 (T90) pellets and Type 45 (T45) pellets.
Varieties come from the UK, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, New Zealand and the USA. Faram’s provides an artist’s palette of flavours to create every type and style of beer, from the traditional varieties to exciting new developmental varieties from Faram’s own breeding and development programme.

Our own varieties include Archer®, Emperor®, Godiva™, Harlequin®, Jester®, Most™, Mystic™, Olicana®, Opus® and Karma®.

TECHNICAL ADVISE

At Charles Faram, we can help you with brewing technical advice and variety recommendations. Whether you’re developing a new recipe or refining an existing one, our in-house brewing experts are always happy to help.

HOP GROWER RELATIONSHIPS

We are more than just a hop merchant. Here at Charles Faram, we have built strong grower relationships throughout our 160-year history with hop growers from around the world. These relationships help ensure we supply the very best hops every single year.

NOT JUST HOPS

While hops are certainly our speciality, we also supply a fantastic range of other brewing essentials, including a wide selection of flavourings suitable for every style of brew. With our portfolio continuing to grow, explore our full product range for more information.

OUR HISTORY

We’ve come a long way since the standard three-hop varieties on offer and the base in the old hop market in Worcester, UK city centre. Fuggles, Goldings and later Challenger were only known by the grower’s name and location back then, and these variety types were quite similar in characteristics. Hop picking has become more mechanised and brewery numbers all over the world have increased dramatically. Tastes and trends have changed, and so too have the hops. Check out our hop development page to find out the commitment that the industry is making to ensure that we can help brewers to create great beer.

Originally operating from the old hop market building, which can still be seen in Worcester today, Charles Faram joined other hop merchants to trade with growers and brewers.

Charles Faram then went on to include a traditional hop store in Sansome Street, also still standing, to fulfil their desire to have a more direct relationship with customers.

Charles Faram is the only hop business to have survived in Worcestershire and has great relationships with growers not only in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, but all over the world.

Further more, our longstanding business and hop development programme have produced deep-rooted relationships with growers and brewers from around the globe.