Hop Growing in 1938

John Paine wrote this for a talk he gave while he was a University Student:

I am going to talk about hop growing in Kent for that is the only county in which I have studied it closely, and on one farm particularly. It is generally admitted, and especially by those who have tried it, that to grow hops is one of the most skilled operations upon which a farmer can embark. Naturally therefore with such a complex subject there are many sides to every question and many methods of performing every operation; in most of the publications now available there are accounts of modern improvements in all branches of the art, but still most of the hops are produced by an older method; so for these reasons I shall tell you what is done on the farm with which I am best acquainted. The buildings and machines are not the latest, but suffice it to say that the system works and shows a profit.

I am going to subdivide my subject as follows;

1. Beer followed by
2. A general description of the plant
3. Its cultivation and management throughout the year
4. Then picking and drying the ripe hops
5. And to end up, the government policy and some of its effects

Beer

Though possibly not necessary here, I will give a reason for the production of hops before going on to the processes involved, for I have met people who actually thought that hops went in at one end of an oast and beer was squeezed out of the other; hops are used in beer making and this is a short description of what happens;-

Barley is first steeped in water then laid out on a floor to germinate, but too much root growth must not be allowed, so it is stopped by drying in a malting kiln after this the roots are removed and the product goes on to the brewery where it is first ground, then put into a masher, where water extraction takes place. The WORT, which runs out at the bottom, passes to the copper where it is boiled. During the boiling some hops are added to

1. Give a pleasant flavour
2. Lend stability to the liquid
3. Precipitate protein matter (by tannin)
4. And act as a filter

Apart from the last named mechanical function of the hop, it is the resinous materials contained in the glands on the bracts which are of value in producing all these effects. And it is the aim of the processes I shall describe to bring these glands to the premises of the brewers in the best possible condition.

During boiling it is the coarser hops that are added for many of the finer volatile compounds are driven off, and first quality hops are no better than coarse ones; even so only about three pounds of hops per barrel are put in.  There are 36 gallons in a barrel, so there are not many hops in beer. The wort is run off filtered and cooled, then yeast is added to produce which fermentation.

Hopping Down means that to certain beers requiring a particular flavour about a pound of the finest hops per barrel is added. There being no more boiling the volatile compounds are safe. Although I have left out many of the important things I hope I have given you an idea of the role hops play in beer making, so I shall now proceed with a description of the cultivation and management of the plant.

Plant and Habitat

There are two varieties of hop belonging to the genus Humulus which comes in the Cannabinaceae, a division of the Urticales, so according to Hutchinson’s classification it is related to the Elm, stinging nettle and hemp (cannabis) but these affinities are not much help in describing the plant. One variety is the Japanese hop, which has no brewing quality but is sometimes grown in gardens, and the other the English hop Humulus lupulus with which we are concerned. The latter is grown for brewing purposes; it is a perennial climber with male and female plants. All that is accessible to the hoe or plough is termed the stool or hill. The aerial parts which grow up in the spring bear the crop and die down in the autumn. The ephemeral part has a twining habit and a rough stem, there are no tendrils, it will grow to about twenty feet in height if encouraged as it is in parts of Germany, it is slender but very tenacious when once twisted round a support. When young the shoots look very like asparagus, but when the foliage is developed the leaves look more like those of a stinging nettle than anything else.

In the Weald of Kent the plant may only live about 9 years, but in general it extends up to considerably more than this, sometimes 50 years, at least the garden occupies the same ground for that time, though the whole thing may have been replanted bit by bit as the plants have died off.

Hops need an open marly calcareous subsoil, the deeper the better. Anything like an old pasture on clayey soil has to be pretty heavily limed before hops will grow well, with much subsequent liming at regular intervals. The soil must not be subject either to severe water logging or drought, for the former usually comes in winter and will kill the plant, and the latter in cropping time with a very bad effect on the season’s growth the following year.

Cultivation and Management

Starting at the end of the harvest season I shall go right round the year describing things as they happen, ending up where I start, having completed the annual cycle of the plant.

The bine or aerial part of the plant is allowed to wither on the ground, the idea being that certain foodstuffs migrate into the stool after the crop has been picked, and immediate cutting would prevent this. When the bine looks thoroughly dead it is cut off at about six inches above the ground and usually burnt, though sometimes it is used as the foundation for a stack. The land having been cleared a furrow is ploughed down the centre of each alley to facilitate drainage through the winter.

After this operation the rest of the winter allows time for making out ditches and repairing the framework upon which the hops climb. There are several methods of training the plant, for if left to themselves in the middle of a field the bines would crawl about on the ground.

1. The oldest method is to stick two chestnut poles into the ground, one on either side of the hill and up these the hops can climb. During the winter these are made into stacks, which are a familiar sight even now in some parts of the country.

2. But nearly always wirework is used and there are many ways of putting this up. The Umbrella system is the one we prefer; wires are stretched across the field North to South and East to West so they intersect over every hill six feet apart and are supported at a height of fifteen feet by poles. During the winter fresh poles and wire must be put in wherever a weakness has occurred because the strain is so great when the crop is ripening during the summer that a fault may mean that the whole thing falls flat.

Pests

One of the most interesting things about hop growing is the control of pests, insect and fungal, and there are a great many of each. It is by exercising skill in this direction that makes a good or bad hop grower in nearly all cases. Although there are many diseases I will only mention the most important ones as they occur through the season.

Wireworms are a nuisance to young hops for they bite through the bases of the stems. It is common knowledge that there is no certain remedy for these insects, but we find that a great deal of the damage is avoided be decoying them into potatoes placed beside the young plant then destroying the tubers. But the sellers of whizzed naphthalene say that their product is efficient in removing them though not lethal. On application we found that it was certainly not lethal but also no good.

The major manuring is done in January. A high humus content of the soil is essential so farmyard manure is used wherever possible. If this is not available something like shoddy, horn or rabbit flick acts as substitute. This is routine, but occasionally phosphate and lime are applied. All the manure is not added at this time, but sufficient to carry the plant up to flowering; for if too much Nitrogen goes on in January then the flowering does not occur till late, and the hops produced are green and hard to dry. The manure is ploughed in March by heaping up the sol towards the middle of the alley, thus leaving the plants in a relatively exposed position in readiness for the next operation. Since the ground is only ploughed in one direction there is left a strip about one foot or two feet wide, which must be dug.

Cutting

The next operation I refer to is cutting. It is just at this time that the plants begin to sprout; and cutting should be done during the three weeks following Lady Day. The soil is cleared away from the stool and all the growing shoots and spreading roots are cut off short. It may at first seem a pointless procedure, so I will enumerate some of the reasons for it.

1. Maintains the rootstock at the correct level, otherwise it tends to rise each year and stick up in the air

2. Removes the runners which weaken the plant and hinder the plough

3. Deflects nutrients into a few channels

4. Controls the date of picking, for about a fortnight alteration in the time of cutting makes a difference of about two or three days at picking

5. And it permits the recovery of sets, as the cut portions are termed.

Propagation

These are the means by which the hop is propagated in this country. In America the roots are used but commercially the seed is never used. In breeding fresh varieties only is it useful, and Professor Salmon is doing most of the work at Wye. If the sets are planted the same year as they are cut, a poor growth results, but if they are kept for a year then planted they are known as “Bedded sets” which produce a few hops their first year, consequently it is common practice to plant with bedded sets and a year is saved.

Stringing

At the same time, before, after, or during cutting the stringing must be done. The hops are supported and led up to the wires by means of coarse coconut fibre string, which is fastened to a hook in the ground just near the hill. Two strings lead up from the hill, and carry four bines each to a height of four foot six inches, where there is a tie, then four strings go on up to the wire taking two bines each.

Training

As the young shoots are sometimes used as a poor substitute for asparagus, it can be imagined they are very brittle and tender, so training is important and at the right time. If overcrowding on one string is allowed, it is deleterious, and the reverse has an equally bad effect on the crop. All the guidance in this direction must be done in the early stages, so most of the labourers wives and all the available hands are set to do this work for about a fortnight. The hop is peculiar in that it is one of the few twining plants that goes round its support with the sun.

As soon as the hops have passed the cross tie it is safe to leave them excepting in times of high wind when much trouble can be caused in a few hours.

During this time of training extensive ploughing and cultivation are in progress. After cutting the furrows are ploughed out from the centre of the alley, followed by several cultivations in both directions, which prevent weeds establishing themselves before the hops are big enough to shade them out of existence. It is necessary to do a little weather prediction at this time, because a very good tilth is essential in a dry time to prevent drought effects, but if the weather turns rainy then the good tilth works in the opposite direction and prevents any heavy washing machines going on the land.

Downy

It is here that I shall deal with the Hop Downy Mildew, for although it is to be observed throughout the season of growth it is at this time that it can get a firm hold on the plant unless checked. The disease has been known in England since 1920 and is now admitted the worst pest in the industry. There are many theories as to its method of introduction to this country, but that is really a matter for pathologists or mycologists, which I will leave, because most suggestions cast aspersions on some agricultural foundation or other.

The mycelium may be systemic as hyphae in the stool, but has not yet been proven fatal although there are some pessimists that say it is merely a matter of time before this will happen. In the earliest stages there grow up “spikes” from the hill. These are shoots showing infection, they are typical in form, the internodes are shortened and the leaves curled also the stem is brittle. The weather has a large control on their formation, for in the dry and cold they do not appear nearly so frequently as in wet warm times when there may be as many as fifty percent of the shoots arising that are infected in this way. These spikes bear conidia, which under the correct conditions are capable of bringing about extensive secondary infection on the leaves of healthy plants.

Secondary infection may be recognized as angular purple spots on the under sides of the leaves which on closer inspection turn out to be conidia and conidiophores. When this stage is reached there is danger of extensive damage because the tips of growing laterals may then become infected with consequent dwarfing and lack of flower. The effect on the hops is the great danger, for although much of the bine may be spoilt, it would then only result in a slightly diminished yield, but the hops that are directly infected do not develop at all or else do so with an unwanted brown colour which the brewers can recognise at once, and a small resin content and poor flavour.

Control

The only known control for basal spike is to pull it out by hand and burn it. Putting Bordeaux on the ground has been tried, with no effect, and it is still a matter of controversy as to whether the spikes are the result of systemic infection or a germinating winter spore just on the tip of the growing shoot. It is certain that the stunting is due to the presence of the fungus in the shoot. On the leaf each of the angular spots is due to a spore, so the best way to arrest that infection is to spray the leaves with Bordeaux, which as far as is known has no effect on the fungus inside the plant, but prevents the spore living after it has germinated. When the hops are young it is most economical to do the spraying by hand, but when they grow older it is too long and expensive a process, so a machine washer drawn by horses or a tractor is used.

Copper Contamination

Is the reason for the refusal on the part of the brewers to buy certain samples of hops which have been sprayed when already well on the way to ripeness, in an effort to prevent the total loss of the crop; the consequence is that they are covered with copper sulphate. Various brewers have extensive gardens down at Bodiam and Paddock Wood in Kent and for the last three years, which have been rather bad for downy mildew, I have seen the hops absolutely blue with Bordeaux; in fact I saw the men at work last year while the hops could be seen on the bine from the road. They use their own hops in this condition.

Aphis

At the same time in May as the downy is bad, the Aphis can be controlled or if left alone will do immense damage, so at the risk of appearing to lose sight of the life history of the plant I will deal with it here. Aphids attack the hop as soon as it begins to grow, but are not usually serious till the plants have attained a considerable size. The cure for an aphis attack is easy, but before the use of nicotine as an insecticide was known it used to be a case of waiting and hoping for the best. It is a saying that an early attack means a good crop but a late one means no hops at all, because, in the first case the aphids starve themselves by eating all the available food before the plants are strong enough to grow fast, then there are enough insects that eat aphis to keep them under control, such as the ladybird  larvae. But in the latter case the plants are sucked dry and there is no strength with which to produce fruit.

Control

The most certain control is to wash with three ounces of Nicotine in a hundred gallons of water, but a spreader must be used or half the leaves will not be covered and many of the insects will escape. Powdering with Derris is also employed, but the conditions have to be so exact that it is frequently possible to wash when it is impossible to powder. The two main conditions are damp warmth and a still atmosphere.

When aphids actually infest the hop itself they make the strig go black and lessen the value of the sample considerably. They have also been suspected of carrying a virus “hop mosaic.”

Last Manuring

While I have been talking about diseases a certain time has elapsed, long enough for the hops to have grown to the top of the wire and are about to come into flower or “bur”. It is the beginning of August and as the flowers are just appearing it is time to make a final application of Nitrogen in an easily available form. We use Guano or Nitrolime which is spread on by hand at the rate of a hundredweight to the crop, which, as I said before, had it been added as extra nitrogenous manure with the FYM in January, would only have had the effect of slowing down the ripening process and making the hops too green.

Fertilization

The time while the stigmas of the female flowers are protruding is known as the “pin stage” and it is the most dangerous time for infection by downy mildew, a single spore at that time can inhibit the growth of a hop. To avoid a long period of danger it is best to fertilize the hops immediately, for which purpose it is necessary to have one male plant to every two hundred females. On the matter of fertilization there are two schools of thought, on the continent a hop without seed is considered better value than the seeded article; the main argument being that the brewers do not have to pay for the very considerable weight of seed. In England it is universally considered best to grow seeded hops because numberless experiments have shown that fertilization increases immunity to various diseases, and also increases the amount of lupulin per hop, though I do not know whether it increases the amount of lupulin in proportion to the weight. In this country therefore 43 males are planted deliberately, and in Germany they are rigorously excluded from the gardens and carefully grubbed out of the hedges.

Ripeness

The hop ripens and turns yellow, rustling to the touch.

Picking

In September the hops are growing up on either side of the alley, to pick them it is necessary to pull down the bines and take off the hops without too many leaves. Our picking is done by three distinct sets of people, the Londoners from Poplar and Kentish Town who come regularly for their annual holiday, the home pickers who are the mothers, wives, daughters and sons of the farm labourers, and the Didicis, the latter are by far the best pickers, but they can also be by far the most nuisance when they set about it.

The Londoners nearly always insist on living in the rather small huts, which are provided, although there are tents to be had for the asking. Even the young men nearly always refuse to sleep in the tents because they say it is too draughty.

Each family has a bin which is the receptacle into which the hops are picked, it is made of coarse cloth suspended on a wooden frame, the whole thing being strong enough to hold 40 bushels and support Mrs Waite who is at least an 18 or 20 stoner. All the bines on one side are picked, then the bin is carried to the next place. And so a line of bins marches across the hop garden starting from the North East corner, because there is nearly always a southwesterly equinoctial gale during picking. By starting in the north east there is exposed as little of the unpicked bines as possible, because hops are easily bruised by strong winds. When this happens they go brown instead of retaining their light primrose colour.

As far as the ground is concerned I have returned to the place whence I set out, for it theory the pickers roll up the bines which are ready to be cut off, but actually they have to be threatened with horrible punishments before they will perform this singularly simple operation. We must now follow the fortunes of the hops, which have yet the worst to come to them. They are measured out of the bin with a bushel basket, and loaded into a measurer. The measurer has to do his job very fairly, and in exactly the same way or he soon becomes unpopular. The basket is made to contain a bushel when it is full to the level indicated by holding the first three knuckles of the fingers down inside it, also the hops must not be pressed down, for the tally or amount paid per bushel is so arranged that the hops should be lightly measured, and the pickers know all about this. Nearby us there is a farm run by a young Canadian who is new to hop growing, the year before last he was managing his own hops and doing the measuring himself for the first time. He came along to my father one day in great distress; his pickers had gone on strike subsequent to a scene in the hop garden when a lady from the Rotherhithe district had said to him “if you do that again I’ll swing yer round by yer earoles”. So he wanted to know just what he was doing wrong, naturally since he was paying for the work (and hop picking is an expensive business) he thought that a full basket was better value for him than otherwise, and he thought that the pickers considered him a trifle green and worth exploiting. He was shown the error of his ways, the strike ended amicably, and he remains unswung.

Subbing and Tally

Payment as I mentioned before is made by the bushel, so many to the shilling, usually 5, and this number is known as the tally. A good bin would pick about 100 bushels a day at that tally, thus earning a pound. They are allowed to sub their money as they go along, for payday is the last day of the season.

Payment

With Didicis on the other hand we find that the best way to employ them is on the understanding that they receive no money till their employment is terminated. Although this cannot be enforced, they generally keep to it unless their employer weakens. They nearly always have plenty of money and do not need to draw it as they earn it. If they are paid half way through, even it if it for a job they have done before, they often go off and will not work any more; occasionally the older members get drunk and make a nuisance amongst the other pickers.

The Londoners are quite different, they sub twice a week and often right up to the amount they have earned, the males often getting drunk each night, though those behaving like that are in the minority. One individual found his way up to the oast at night and walked in, patting me on the shoulder said “if you want any help, call me, I am going to lie down” whereupon he turned round, tripped over a barrel and fell onto some hard and very unevenly laid pieces of oak, and here he remained till 6.0 next morning without moving.

Labour

The large amount of hand labour needed twice in the year, at training and picking, means that the labour requirement of hop growing is very variable. At training time the few casuals that come round combined with the wives of the labourers fill the gap; but at picking it is necessary for a large influx to take place, and since the job is paid piece time and can be very remunerative for a skilful worker, considerably more than half the picking is done by the casuals that come specifically for that purpose.

The oast

The hops are carted from the field to the oast, which is a building consisting of the kilns in which the drying takes place and the floor on which the hops cool and are generally manipulated. The kiln is vertical, and of a round or square cross section to a height of about 30 feet, at which point is the drying floor, built of rafters carrying laths, which are so spaced that the air can pass through freely, yet it is possible to walk upon it. A mat, woven out of horse hair, "the hair" covers the floor, so that air can pass through and it can stand the heat which is going to play upon it. Above the level of the hair the roof of the kiln starts, it slopes in towards the top where the cowl is situated, this is a wooden shield mounted on a shaft which runs on a penny for lubrication, and it prevents the wind blowing down into the kiln, also when the wind is blowing helps to draw the air up through. The size of the floor is generally about 300-400 sq feet and the height of the cowl above that is 40 or 50 foot, but for efficiency the higher the better. Actually there was once a floor of about 8 or 9 hundred feet, but it met a sad end, for it was not at all easy to dry hops on it well, so they used it as an apple store; one year the man was carrying in one of the last baskets of a large load when the whole thing collapsed about him and it took a long time to get him out; since then it has remained in ruins.

The hops are loaded onto the hair immediately they are brought in, whenever possible, but otherwise the pokes are left in the most draughty place, so that they do not heat up, for this spoils the hops far faster than any other form of maltreatment. The hops once on the hair must be levelled, and this is not an easy job, for only very slight undulations make a great difference to the drying and evenness of the final sample, especially at night it is difficult by the light of a flickering lantern.

The kiln is well equipped with a movable platform upon which a man can stand and propel himself over the hops instead of having to stand in them. The roller hair moves along so that the hops dribble over the edge onto a cloth spread to catch them, and there is no need of continuous walking to and fro in them, and there is a board at the back to prevent them falling off there.

Old Method of Drying

As soon as levelling finishes, the fire is started slowly so that drying does not begin, but a drought is forced through the hops while some sulphur is being burnt in pans at the side of the fire.  If the hops are not bleached by burning sulphur they are not quite such a light colour as they should be and also they are more susceptible to mildew than after treatment. The reason for burning it outside the fire is the arsenic scare.

The use by brewers of arsenic as a substitute for malt, and the contamination of one of these by arsenic caused some years ago a great many cases of poisoning in Lancashire in which several deaths occurred. This led to the inquiry into the purity of brewing materials, and it was found that malt to a considerable extent, and hops to an infinitesimal extent, could contain arsenic if the coal used in the open fire system of curing were contaminated with arsenic. The relatively small quantity of hops used per barrel of beer made the danger of arsenic contamination through hops a negligible one; but the scare is used to depress the price of those hops which were found to be contaminated with a minute proportion of arsenic, due also to a slight over production, it must be admitted.

As well as burning the sulphur in pans beside the fire, the best anthracite has to be used as a fuel, for on analysis it has been shown to have the minimum arsenic content of all available coals.

For four hours or thereabouts the moisture comes off rapidly, and the fire must be kept low, or else the hops below are at too great a temperature difference from those above with the result that moisture deposition takes place on the latter and they lose their colour as well as aroma and then are known as reeky hops. The heat is regulated in two ways, by making the fire burn more or less and by controlling the amount of air that passes over the fire, at this early stage the aim of the drier is to get as much air through as possible at a temperature of about 100 degrees C; and to do this he has a fairly large fire and lifts up the sliding shutter above 17 feet so that a large volume of air may pass in over the top. The principle of draught control is the same as that used in the drawing room when the fire is not behaving and a newspaper has to be placed in front to make it draw.

We have one fire to each kiln, but the old method was to have a fire round in a circle so that much more care was needed, for any one of these fires could race away and spoil the whole load.

As soon as the major part of the moisture is off, there is no danger of reeky hops and the temperature is raised, either by making up the fire or by pulling the shutter down so that all the air passing in must be in closer contact with the fire. Sometimes the process takes 8 hours, and sometimes 20, it all depends upon various factors, unripe hops take much longer than ripe ones. If there is a howling gale the job is soon done, and if there is a dull, still thundery day there is for certain a long time to wait and great probability of a poor sample for the draught often will not start off.

Cooling off

When the hops are done, the strigs in the middle upon which are born the bracts are dry, the perfect condition is about 10 brittle to one tough. The fire is then shut off and cold air allowed to permeate the whole floor, for after cooling the hops are not as breakable as they are when hot; they are then pushed along the floor with scuppets onto a large cloth hung outside the door to catch them, upon which they are pulled so that breakage is eliminated as far as possible. The brewers now like unbroken samples, but the custom used to be that broken hops sold best, in fact the dryer used to make them brittle by burning on the fire some sulphur just as the drying was complete and this treatment made them all the more breakable. There always used to be in the oast a large log with which to crush up insufficiently broken loads. Now we do exactly the reverse, for after the rack is off, no sulphur is allowed anywhere near the hops, and in fact if they are a trifle overdone, sugar is put on the fire to “bring them back” a little.

Pressing

The hops having now reached the floor of the oast are ready to pack; this is done by means of a press. The hops are pushed into the pocket which is a bag about 2 ft wide and 8 ft high suspended from the floor so that it hangs down and the top is held by a hoop. The hops are made to occupy about a tenth of their normal volume by pressure into the pocket, then they are sewn in, the amount of hops included being about one hundred weight and a half. At this stage they are ready to go to market.

There are however snags about the packing, for “cold packed” is not a condition encouraged by the buyers; if they have not been dried enough, they are “slack dried” and this is worse than the former, because they take up moisture very rapidly and go mouldy, the condition is easy to detect because the weight of the pocket very markedly increases. Lastly if they are put in too hot, they go on cooking in the pocket and are over-dried by the time they arrive at the market because in the middle there has been no opportunity for the uptake of the necessary amount of moisture which is demanded.

The pocket is then sown up and ready for the lorry either to convey it right up to London or to the train. It is an offence for which the fine is one pint payable to the finder, to allow the name of the grower to be visible on a single pocket when they are loaded.

In London the hops are sampled, a square piece is cut out of the pocket and from it the valuation of all that hundredweight and a half is made. The pockets are weighed, and it is then that they are liable to maltreatment, for it the weigher suspects anything he stokes the pocket from all angles with a long knife to see if any foreign bodies are hidden within.

The Government and Hops

In the years following the War the hop growing industry fell upon bad times because the supply exceeded the demand, with the result that the warehouses began to fill up with unwanted hops and in 1925 hops came back to the growers at 5 shillings a pocket as manure, which price did not even cover the cost of the packing.

The farmers then got together and decided to remedy things themselves. The result was a decree for a voluntary reduction by one third of the acreage growing hops, and the way they did it was to appoint farmers in various districts to be responsible that the growers did the necessary grubbing. To a certain extent the move was successful and many people carried out their contract, but a few men advanced their own interests at the expense of the rest. Instead of refusing to grub as they had a perfect right to do, they interplanted their gardens with sets, grubbed the old plants so that the inspectors and neighbours saw them in the winter diggings holes and the next year had the same acreage as they always had. These men exhibited acute business ability, because they avoided adverse public opinion and soon afterwards the government took things into its hands with the institution of the Hops Marketing Board.

This consisted in a contract between the brewers and the government for a fixed price (about £9 per hundredweight) for the whole crop for each year. The crop was limited by the introduction of a quota on each farm which was based on the weight of hops produced during the three previous years during which the farmers’ control had been in operation, so these who had not grubbed their third of an acre had an advantage.

There is no way of getting round the Hops Marketing Board like the old control because, with the exception of Wye College and East Malling Research Station, it is illegal for a man to sell a hop, excepting through the board, so all the hops go through their hands and the quota is on a weight basis. I think that it is this inability on the part of the farmers to diddle the Board that has to a very large extent accounted for its success. Each farmer has his quota or right to sell hops through the board, say a hundred hundredweight, if he grows less then he has the right to sell the surplus permission, say twenty hundredweight, which can be bought by those who have grown too many hops. The price of quota has been as high as five pounds per hundredweight and as low as a few shillings depending upon the crop, whether it is light or heavy. So in the case I have cited the farmer has the chance of making a hundred pounds clear profit because the crop fell short. But if a man gives up growing then he loses his quota; this prevents people taking advantage of the scheme by grubbing their hops, doing no work and living on the procedes of the sold quota.

In 1937 it appeared that there would be a very heavy crop, so quota rose to about ninety five shillings in the first week in September, but nearly everybody began picking too early, because the crop looked like “going off” and consequently lost weight, for the dry weight of the hop goes up rapidly during the last few days of ripening, therefore during the latter part of September when picking was stopping in many places the price of quota dropped to the purely nominal sum of ten shillings. As you can see, a farmer last year could have lost himself four hundred pounds by buying five tons of quota three weeks too early.

If a man grows too many hops he can send them to London but they go into pool “B”; if they are good they may be sold before pool “A” hops have been paid for in full. So unless there is a shortage it does not pay to send hops to pool “B”, but to pay something for quota and be sure of a return. It can be seen from these brief remarks that the scheme is a benefit to growers of bad hops, but a doubtful blessing for growers of the best quality.

The Board was instituted for five years, this is the fifth, nobody knows quite what will happen next.

History

Though I can not give you an record of hop growing by the Chinese or even the Egyptians when this island was peopled with savages, I will give you the first reference I could find; King Papin le Bref gave a hop garden to the monastery of St Denis in about the year 768, so the church was already interesting itself in temperance.

Our interest will be with the plant in this country, so I will follow the fortunes of the hop in England. It is indigenous to most parts of Europe, including England, but here was not considered profitable by agriculturalists till about the middle of Henry the eighth’s reign in 1524, when it was introduced from Flanders as an industry.

Previous to that in Henry the sixth’s reign it was said to be a wicked weed because it had begun to find its way into beer and apparently caused it to “dry up the body and increase melancholy”.

It had long been of use as a medicine which alleviated ear troubles and also purified the blood, healed the itch and relieved the liver. But for these purposes there were plenty of hops in the hedges, and not till it was put into the beer more often was it seriously introduced into agriculture; even then there was still opposition for Henry the eighth ordered that no hops be put into the ale. And as late as 1650 the city of London petitioned Parliament to beware of it.

Newcastle coals with regard to their stench and hops in that they would spoyl the taste of drink and endanger the people

After that the opposition died out, and till the present century there is little to report, but lately there have been controls which have attempted to improve the position of the farmer and to keep the industry on its feet. The first was the Hop Control which was initiated by the growers and run by them because the supply was exceeding the demand with the result that many groups were having to give up

Distribution

There could be drawn a wiggly line across America, England and Europe either side of which hops are grown. It would come from Oregon to Hereford, Kent and out through Bavaria, via the Saaz district. Now if this line were considered as a band of width one and a half degrees of latitude, it would include all the land whereon the best quality hops are grown. There must therefore be some very limited conditions under which the plant can be grown to produce its optimum crop.

In Kent the best hops are grown on the outcrop of the lower Greensand, which naturally is on a slope, but coarser hops can be grown on the Wealden clay, they are however in a worse position as well as being on poorer soil, for on the hills the drainage is natural, but down on the clay the ditches have to be made out each year in the winter and kept rather deep, and they always naturally silt up.