High Hopes for Home Hopping

Countryside Column for 12 December

Here’s Hoping Home Hopping Isn’t Mad

I got a call to say my hop plants have arrived. I ordered them a few weeks ago and still don’t know what variety they are. Apparently there are more than 20 different strains available. I rather fancy Boadicea. The name has a pleasing ancient Briton ring. Sadly, though, they turn out to be an aphid resistant hybrid produced by Wye College just 10 years ago.

Round here I think Fuggles were more traditional. They were released in 1875 by Mr Richard Fuggle of Brenchley from a seedling selected a few years earlier from a strain found growing wild.

In my youth a Fuggles Garage dominated the centre of the village. Now a group of houses stands where our ancient Hillman was serviced. There’s still a Fuggles undertaking in a town nearby, though they are funeral directors so I have no idea if there’s any connection to the hop.

Which is a little tangential to my tale. The thing is I like hop bines. They smell lovely and look decorative over the inglenook. But they need replacing every year or two and, skinflint that I am, I resent paying £10 a throw. Plus I had a couple of hop poles over from a summer project and so thought a bit of GYO (grow your own) might be in order.

It may well be that, within a few years, the only hops left in England will be grown in back yards. In 1870 there were 77,000 acres under cultivation.  Today it’s a mere 2,400.  There are still a few isolated hop gardens round here but a large one nearby was recently grubbed up and replanted with vines.

I’ve often wondered at the economics of the industry. Within half a mile of me there are at least five Oast houses - big brick affairs which would have cost a packet to build. But it was calculated that one acre of hops could make as much as 50 acres of arable farming so the profits must have been substantial.

 And it all came about because of a dramatic change in taste in the 17^th century. Before that the English had drunk ale - a brew made without hops. But then they acquired the taste for the type of bitter beer brewed in Germany and the Low Counties. 

No, I wasn’t planning to take up home brewing. Though I suppose if my bines do particularly well…