The Curiosities of Ale & Beer. John Bickerdyke
Kent third, and North Cray fourth; but he was probably mistaken, for the hops of East Kent have always been held to be the best in all England, pre-eminent alike for strength and flavour; those of Farnham, however, run them very closely. Our English hops, indeed, are far superior to most of those imported, and the foreigners are rarely used in beer without an admixture of home-grown hops. Immense quantities now come from abroad; in 1828 only 4 cwt. were imported!
Until quite recently, the whole of the hops in this country were poled upon much the same system as that described in Reynolde Scot’s old pamphlet—that is, three or four plants would be grown on a hillock, each having a pole to climb. Now, the poles are largely supplemented by wires arranged in various ways, sometimes, when covered with bine, forming bell-tents of hops; and sometimes running from pole to pole. Other wires leaving them at right angles are attached to pegs in the ground. The aspect of the gardens is greatly changed, but they are not less beautiful than of yore. Train the hop as you will, you cannot make it unlovely. The vines twist lovingly round the slender wires and tall poles, the former bending under their weight and swaying to and fro in the breeze. From pole to pole run the topmost shoots, and the whole field is one large arbour, roofed, if it be autumn, with verdant foliage and golden green fruit. Then, may be, the sunlight here and there touches the glorious clusters, giving them still richer colours. “The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,” wrote old Tusser, “and for his grace and beauty,” he might have added, but the worthy Thomas was nothing if not practical. Howitt, in his Year Book of the Country thus writes of the hop country in autumn: “But all is not sombre and meditative in September. The hopfield and the nutwood are often scenes of much jolly old English humour and enjoyment. In Kent and Sussex the whole country is odorous with the aroma of hop, as it is breathed from the drying kilns and huge wagons filled with towering loads of hops, thronging the road to London. But not only is the atmosphere perfumed with hops, but the very atmosphere of the drawing-room and dining-room too. Hops are the grand flavour of conversation as well as of beer. Gentlemen, ladies, clergymen, noblemen, all are growers of hops, and deeply interested in the state of the crop and the market.” {89}
The use of wires is a serious matter for hop-pole growers if the following calculation, made by some ingenious person, be correct. Suppose that 45,000 acres of hops are under cultivation, and each acre annually requires 800 new poles, the total annual requirement will be 36,000,000 poles. Each acre of underwood from which poles are cut produces about 3,000. Every year, therefore, 12,000 acres of underwood must be cut to supply the demand. If each acre produces on an average 2,000 poles, which is nearer the truth than 3,000, then 18,000 acres must be cut annually to supply the hop-gardens with poles.
Poets, in their search for similes, have not overlooked hops and hop poles. In Gay’s A New Song of New Similes occur the following lines:—
Hard is her heart as flint or stone, She laughs to see me pale; And merry as a grig is grown, And brisk as bottled ale.
Ah me! as thick as hops or hail The fine men crowd about her.
Then Cotton, in his verses to John Bradshaw, Esq., writes:—
Mustachios looked like heroes’ trophies Behind their arms in th’ Herald’s office; The perpendicular beard appeared Like hop-poles in a hopyard reared.
Hop-growers’ troubles, furnish a theme of which, were we hop-growers, we fear our readers would weary, for a volume might very well be filled with a relation of them. Not being hop-growers, and having much to write about ere we inscribe the sad word “finis,” we must content ourselves only with such an account as will give our readers a general idea of the subject. To begin with, the annual outlay per acre in the gardens is very great, being about £36. A hop acre, be it observed, is not an ordinary acre, but contains a thousand hop plants in rows, six or seven feet apart, and is equal to about two-thirds the statutory acre.
No crops are more precarious than the humulus lupulus. How said Dr. Booker?—
The spiral hop, high mantling, how to train No common care to Britain’s gen’rous sons, Lovers of “nut-brown ale”—sing fav’ring Muse!
{90}
A glance at statistics will show the truth of our statement. In 1882 the return per acre did not average more than 1½ cwt. on account of a perfect plague of aphides; while in 1859, which is about the best hop year of the century, the return was 13¼ cwt. per acre. The average yield during the last seventy-six years is about 6¾ cwt. per acre; not a very large return for the outlay. In 1839 a certain hop plantation in Kent of about 21½ acres, produced 15 cwt. per acre, and in the following year only 1 cwt. per acre.
These extraordinary variations in the production of hop gardens are caused by insects and the weather. Early in the year, when the vines appear well grown and sturdy, the hop-grower may with a light heart, perhaps, prophesy a good crop. In May a few aphides—winged females—are noticed, and in August the silvery brightness of the delicate bracts is blackened and spoilt by the filth of the lice—larvæ of the hop aphis. About September a mighty wind comes; poles are blown down in all directions, the ground is strewn with the cones blown from the vines, and branches are bruised, causing the cones on them to wither and decay before picking-time. Just as the hops are ripening two or three cold nights perhaps occur, which throw them back and materially reduce the value of the crop. Then they may be attacked with mildew, or even when all evils have in most part been avoided, picking-time has all but arrived, and the hop-grower is congratulating himself on his good fortune, a shower of hail may happen, stripping the vines and reducing the value of the crop by three-fourths.
Miss Ormerod, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society, has given much study to, and thrown considerable light upon, the hop aphis. The course of the attack upon the hop she has discovered to be as follows:—The aphis first comes upon the hop in the spring in the form of wingless females (depositing young), which ascend the bine from the ground. The great attack, however, which usually occurs in the form of “fly” about the end of May, comes from damson and sloe bushes as well as from the hop; the hop aphis and the damson aphis being, in Miss Ormerod’s opinion, very slight varieties of one species, and so similar in habits that for all practical purposes of inquiry they may be considered one.
From experiments made on hop grounds in Hereford, the use of various applications round the hills in the late autumn or about the beginning of April, completely prevented attacks to the vines of those hills until the summer attack came on the wing. Paraffin in any dry material spread on the hills, proved serviceable both as a preventive {91} and a remedy, and petroleum and kerosine were also used with advantage. Among the methods of washing, the application of steam power opens up a possibility of carrying out these operations with rapidity and at less cost. When the fly is very bad, the common practice is, after the picking is over, to clear the land of bine and weeds and to place quicklime round the hills or plant centres.
When the hop is fully formed, shortly before picking, if the weather be hot and close, almost the whole crop may be destroyed in a few days. The aphides penetrate the hop and suck from the tender bracts the juice, some of which exudes; this, the moist weather retarding evaporation, produces decay at the point of puncture, and a black spot shows, technically called “mould.” The great enemies to the lice are the ladybirds, which devour them greedily, and a hop-grower would as soon destroy a ladybird as a herring fisherman a seagull.
It has been recently suggested that the suitability or not of soil for hop-growing, depends upon the presence or absence of sulphur, which is an essential ingredient of hops. There is more than one instance on record where hops treated with gypsum (sulphate of lime) were free from mould, while in adjoining gardens the hops not so treated suffered severely. The hops least liable to blight and mould contain the largest amount of sulphur. A curious fact has been proved in Germany by careful analysis. In plants attacked by the hop bug the proportion of sulphur is much greater in the healthy and unattacked leaves than in those infested with the bug. This subject hardly comes within the range of our work, and we merely mention it to bring it into notice among hop-growers, whom further experiments with gypsum may possibly benefit. It