Hops (Humulus lupulus)

  Hops

Hops are the female flower cones, also known as strobiles, of the hop plant (Humulus lupulus). The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis (hemp). They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine. The first documented use of hops in beer as a bittering agent is from the eleventh century. Prior to this period, brewers used whatever bitter herbs and flowers were around. Dandelion, burdock root, marigold and heather were often used prior to the discovery of hops.[1] Hops are used extensively in brewing today for their many purported benefits, including balancing the sweetness of the malt with bitterness, contributing a variety of desirable flavors and aromas, and having an antibiotic effect that favors the activity of brewer's yeast over less desirable microorganisms.


Hop cone in a Hallertau, Germany, hop yardThe hop plant is a vigorous climbing herbaceous perennial, usually grown up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden or hop yard when grown commercially. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types being used for particular styles of beer.

Hop bines are a climbing plant, similar to beans and peas in that respect. 'Training' (or twiddling) the bines up strings or wires supports plants, allowing the plants significantly greater growth with the same sunlight profile. Energy that would have been required to build structural cells is also freed for crop growth.




Until mechanisation, the need for massed labor at harvest time meant hop-growing had a big social impact. For example, many of those hop picking in Kent, a hop region first mechanised in the 1960s, were Eastenders. For them, the annual migration meant not just money in the family pocket but a welcome break from the grime and smoke of London. Whole families would come down on special trains and live in hoppers' huts and gradients for most of September, even the smallest children helping in the fields.[11][12]

In Kent, the numbers of hop-pickers who came down from the city meant that many growers issued their own currency to those doing the labor. In some cases, the coins issued, often adorned with fanciful hops images, were themselves quite beautiful. As the currency could in the main be spent only at the company store, this was effectively a truck system.[13]



Sonoma County in California was, pre-mechanization, a major US producer of hops. As in other hop-growing regions, the labor-intensive harvesting work involved large numbers of migrant workers traveling from other parts of the state or elsewhere for the annual hop harvest.[14][15] During the Great Depression, many workers were migrant laborers from Oklahoma and the surrounding region who had recently come to California. Others included locals, particularly older school children. Sometimes whole families would work in the harvest. The remnants of this significant hop industry are still noticeable in the form of old hop kilns that survive in Sonoma County. In part because of the hop industry's importance to the county, local Florian Dauenhauer of Santa Rosa, the seat of Sonoma County, created one of the earliest and most significant hop-harvesting machines but ironically this mechanization helped destroy the local industry.[14] It enabled large-scale mechanized production which moved to larger farms in other areas.

                                            Mature hops growing in a hop yard. (Germany)
 
    Hops have been a key constituent in the production of beer since Viking times.  But Hops have many other uses. The stems are used in Sweden to create rough cloth, and also paper. The young shoots were eatch as a vegetable by the ancient Greeks. The leaves and flower heads produce brown dye. The fruit, or cones. of the female which are used in brewting are also steeped hot water, which is nused as a tonic to improve the appetite and as a digestive. At one time a cup of Hop tea taken daily was thought to produce good health and prolong life.
 

                                                     Ready  to  Harvest
 
 
Strictly speaking Hops belong to the stinging neetle family and as such are in fact relatively easy to grow. Their historic susceptibility to aphids is easily solved if you 'import' some ladybirds as pest controls. Plant Hops in the ground or in deep tubs and give them wires or supports to grow along and they take off at a considerable pace. They can be trained up walls, into arches, or if you have enough you can make a semi-sheltered soporific. Indeed Hop pillows are making a comeback as a really effective alternative solution to insomina.
 
 Hops are often used in healing incenses and are incorporated in sachets for household protection. Strings of dried Hopsw, often seen today as decoration in retaurants and bars, were thoughts to drive out evil spirits, dispel all bad humor and encourage liveliness of energy. Give chains of Hops as a blessing on a new home.