FILMING & BROADCAST ALERT & CHATTER SHEETS:

ICE CREAM FESTIVAL & HOPS N HARVEST BEER CELEBRATIONS

Kent Life Heritage Farm Park, Lock Lane, Sandling, Maidstone invites TV and radio crews for outside broadcasts and filming opportunities at two of its seasonal festivals:

• Bank Holiday Monday 26^thAugust - Ice Cream Festival, 10am to 6pm

End of summer ice cream celebration featuring more than 60 varieties covering 35 lip-smacking flavours, including two dairy-free varieties,from eight different ice cream companies.  Last year's bestsellers included Candy Floss and Bubble Gum.  Contenders for the new festival favourite are Cherry Bakewell Ripple - combining almond ice-cream, tangy cherry sauce, nuts and digestive biscuit crumb,White Chocolate & Raspberry, Brown Bread, Christmas Pudding, Lemon Meringue and Kentish Honey. 

(Also, see below Ice Cream chatter sheet.)

• Saturday 7^th& Sunday 8^thSeptember - Hops n Harvest Beer Festival featuring Basil Brush, from 10am

The last traditional, working coal-fired Oast in Britain, where the hops are still dried and cooled by hand, is fired up for the festival. 

The Kent Life Heritage Farm Park hop harvest: After picking the hops are taken directly from the hop garden to the Oast house where they are dried on a specially constructed floor above the kiln, called ‘an airer'. They stay here for around 7-8 hours. Furnaces are fuelled with coal and produce a steady flow of hot air. Once dry, the hops are spread across the floor of the cooling room (for around 1 - 1.5 hours), ready to be pressed into the hop pocket and sent to the brewery.

Hop gardens have flourished in Kent since the 1500s as a result of the rich fertile soil, sheltered sunny sites and woodland, which has provided hop poles and fuel.  Kent Life's hop garden is the perfect example of a typical Kentish hop garden with a complicated system of poles and wires, up which the hop bines are ‘twiddled' to allow them to grow to their full height and still be pulled down at harvest time.

Festival highlights:

• Hop harvesting - get involved in the hop harvest
• Hoppers' Huts - take a look inside a hoppers' hut recreate a typical standard of living for the hoppers, whole families of Londoners, who escaped the London pollution every year and migrated to the Garden of England in late August / early September for several weeks. 
• Taste Kent's finest craft beers, brewed by a vast array of Kent brewers
• New for 2019 - a Gin bar featuring a line-up of artisan Kentish Gins.
• Special guest and family favourite Basil Brush will be making a ‘Boom, Boom' in the Big Top
• Live music from an array of local Kentish bands and solo performers featuring on both the Main Stage and the Acoustic stage. 

Ice Cream Chatter Sheet -Ten Ice Cream Facts

1. The people of Scotland and Northern Ireland eat more ice cream on average than those in England and Wales. 
2. On average, each person in the UK eats 9 litres of ice cream every year; sounds a lot but the Scandinavians eat more with the Americans topping the chart at 20 litres per year!
3. Surveys have shown that men are more likely to choose ice cream as a dessert than women.
4. Ice Cream Sundaes were created when it became illegal to sell ice cream with flavoured soda on a Sunday in the American town of Evanston during the late 19th century. Some traders got round it by serving it with syrup instead, calling it an 'Ice Cream Sunday' and eventually replacing the final 'y' with an 'e' to avoid upsetting religious leaders
5. Most ice cream contains more milk protein weight for weight than is present in milk itself
6. Today most ice creams contain only around 5% fat and plenty of calcium, minerals and vitamins
7. While many people are only aware of a handful of ice cream companies there are over 1,000 in the U.K. producing hundreds of flavours. Despite this fact, vanilla remains the favourite being chosen nine times out of ten.
8. Today more and more ice creams have savoury flavours including Smoked Bacon and Egg, Black Pepper, Chilli and even Black Pudding any plenty made using beer such as Newcastle Brown! The Japanese also have horse meat and the Koreans Green Tea ... lovely!
9. If you only take a few scoops form a large tub of ice cream, protect the quality of the ice cream by preventing air getting to it by scrunching up a few pieces of greaseproof paper and put these on top of the ice cream before replacing the lid.
10. Ice crystals in ice cream show that it has been badly kept ie. it has been allowed to thaw and then been refrozen. If you detect ice crystals you should throw the ice cream away and buy more.

Source:www.icecream.org- The Ice Cream Alliance.

Beer Chatter Sheet - Ten Beer Facts

1. A top tipple.... beer is the third most popular drink in the world, sadly edged out by water and tea!
2. Old as the hills.... beer is one of the world's oldest beverages! Egyptian grave goods included malted barley while brewing in ancient Babylon was such a serious business that producing a bad batch was sufficient grounds for being drowned in it!
3. Beer saved lives!  In medieval times, ale was the cheapest and cleanest beverage available (water was downright dangerous) and people were drinking up to a gallon a day!
4. Not just for grown-ups... watered down "small beer" was once a regular thirst quencher for children!  Malt extracts are still given to children today.
5. A serious brewing tradition - not only is Kent integral to the story of hops in Britain it's also home to Shepherd Neame, the country's oldest brewer with a history that can be traced back to 1573.
6. Divine providence - there are a least five patron saints of beer and brewing, chief being France's St Arnou, as well as Sant Arnaldo di Soisson, the patron saint of hop pickers and Saints Adriano, Floriano and Brigida.
7. Gravity defying - it's true - beer bubbles do not adhere to the laws of physics!  Following a non-Newtonian loop, they rise in the centre where frictional drag is less and down the outside as the top gets crowded.
8. Foamy goodness - the foamy head is an important part of the beer.  Formed by a complex carbon-dioxide reaction, interestingly you can dissolve it with a quick stir of your finger. Or just drink it!
9. Hops on the run - it was Flemish refugees fleeing religious persecution who brought hops to Kent and made them part of our society.  Until that time, ale was bittered with gruit - a mix of herbs containing heather, botanicals, spices or bark.
10. Cenosillicaphobia.... fear of an empty beer glass!

Source:www.kentfoodtrails.co.uk- Kent's Hops & Beers Bite Sized Guide

Ends

Note to editors

Kent Life Heritage Farm Park is a 28-acre working farm and visitor attraction situated in Maidstone, Kent on the site of the original Sandling Farm.  It was originally part of the wider Allington Castle estate, owned by Thomas Wyatt in the mid-16^thCentury.  Today, it is one of the few remaining places in Britain where hops are grown, harvested, dried and packed by hand in its magnificent Oast house, using only traditional techniques, at the annual Hops n Harvest Beer Festival in September.

Open throughout the year, Kent Life tells the Kent farming story and provides a fun family day out discovering more than 200 farmyard animals, indoor and outdoor play areas, and Kentish gardens and orchards.  Visitors can step back in time to experience Kent's farming heritage in the Vintage Village, which is made up of reconstructions of original rural Kent buildings that have been re-built brick by brick.

The attraction also hosts a series of seasonal special events throughout the year, catering for the whole family.  Schools can take advantage of a varied schools' programme of educational activities and interactive learning linked to the national curriculum. Bespoke experiential event packages, catering for weddings, social functions and children's birthday parties, are also available.

For media enquiries contact:

Clare Pope, Hoot & Holler PR on behalf of Kent Life Heritage Farm Park

Email:clare@hootandhollerpr.com, Tel: 07828 711411

www.kentlife.org.uk

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