Hops

In October 2008 I delivered the annual hop lecture at Shepherd Neame's brewery in Kent. Many people have asked for a printed version, so here it is!

My theme for today is an old one: Those whom the gods seek to destroy, they first drive mad. Ever since the humble hop raised its green head in England there have been strenuous efforts to ban it. And if you think the hop is no longer an endangered species, think on.

When you consider that England has, almost since the dawn of time, been a great beer-drinking nation, it's surprising that we adopted the hop so late in life. The hop plant existed here in Roman times but the Romans ate hops as a delicacy, rather like asparagus. It's an ancient plant that apparently grew in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon around 200 AD. Knowledge of the hop and its use in brewing was taken to the Caucasus and into parts of Germany by Slavs following the break up of the Roman empire. Hop gardens existed in the Hallertau region of Germany in 736 AD and were used by monks who brewed beer at the Weihenstephan Holy Stephen -- monastery near Munich. The brewery is still in production and proudly calls itself the Oldest Brewery in the World. In 1079, the Abbess Hildegarde of St Ruprechtsberg in Baden referred to the use if hops in beer. Hop cultivation was also reported in Prague, already emerging an important brewing centre.

But long before it reached these shores, the hop was a cause of controversy. For centuries in Europe, brewing was dominated by the church and the church controlled what was called the gruit market, gruit being a mixture of herbs and plants used to balance the biscuity sweetness of malt in beer. Gruit continued to be used in Germany until the 16th century. In Russia, Archduke Vassili II banned the use of hops while in Cologne in Germany the archbishop who had cornered the market in gruit attempted to outlaw the hop.

But the hop is a tough plant, the wolf plant in Latin. Drinkers liked the taste of hopped beer and brewers grasped its importance not just as a bittering agent, but also as a preservative that prolonged the life of their brews. By the 14th century, the Dutch had acquired a taste for the strongly hopped beers of Hamburg and by 1400 Dutch merchants trading in Kent and Sussex introduced both hopped beer and hop cultivation into the Winchelsea area. It's possible that hops may have been used in England earlier: the famous Graveney long boat, that foundered off Faversham in the 10th century and which is now in the Greenwich Maritime Museum, contains hop residues. This suggests that hops may have been brought from France to Kent earlier than previously thought.

But without doubt it was in the 15th century that the heavens opened. A fierce battle over the merits of unhopped ale and hopped beer went on for decades and the debate was loud and vituperative. Patriotic English ale drinkers muttered darkly into their tankards about strangers and beer brewers. The Brewers' Company was set up in 1437 expressly to defend the interests of ale brewers. It requested that no hops, herbs or other like thing be put into ale whereof ale shall be made but only liquor, malt and yeast. Rising to the challenge to traditional ale, the city of Norwich, where many Flemish weavers had settled, banned the use of hops. In 1519, the use of the wicked and pernicious weed, hops was prohibited in Shrewsbury and Henry VIII, who enjoyed a tankard or two between wives, told his court brewer to use neither hops nor brimstone in his brews. He was right to ban brimstone...

In 1524, the time of a large influx of Flemish weavers into south-east England, a piece of doggerel complained that Hops, Reformation, Pickerel and Beer/Came to England in one bad year. But all the complaints and bad rhymes were put in the shade by an astonishing jingoistic tirade in 1542 by Andrew Boorde in his Compendyous Regyment or Dyetary of Health: Beer is made of malte, hoppes and water; it is the natural drynke for a Dutcheman, and now of lete days it is much used in England to the detryment of many Englysshe people; specyally it kylleth them the which be troubled with the colyke; and the stone and the strangulion; for the drinke is a colde drynke, ye it doth make a man fat, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the Dutchemen's faces and belyes. Ale on the other hand is a natural drinke for an Englysshe man.

In spite of such outbursts, hop growing began to spread. The first hop gardens were laid out in Kent in 1520. The loamy soil was ideal, there was an abundance of wood to make hop-poles and charcoal for drying picked hops and Kentish farmers were prosperous and had the funds to invest in hop gardens. A rhyme of the time said:

A nobleman of Cailes A knight of Wales A laird of the North Countree, A yeoman of Kent with his yearly rent, Could buy them out all three. This may not be the case today!

Beer using Kentish hops was soon being brewed in the south of England. It was beer, not ale, that was sent to France in 1522 to refresh the English troops stationed there. Army accounts that year record that 10,000 pounds of hops costs 10 shillings per hundred. The commercial advantages of hopped beer can be seen from invoices for ale and beer at a royal banquet held in Windsor Park in 1528, where 15 gallons of beer and 15 gallons of ale were ordered for the guests. The beer cost 20 pennies, the ale 2 shillings and sixpence. The better keeping qualities of the hopped beer meant that less malt had to be used ale was traditionally brewed to a high strength so the alcohol would prolong its life. In an amazingly successful book, A Perfitte Platforme for a Hoppe Garden, published in 1574 successful because it ran to three editions Reynold Scott set out the advantages of hopped beer: Whereas you cannot make above 8 to 9 gallons of indifferent ale from one bushel of malt, you may draw 18-20 gallons of very good beer. If your ale may endure a fortnight, your beer through the benefit of the hop shall continue a month, and what grace it yieldeth to the taste all men may judge that have sense in their mouths. And if controversy be betwixt beer and ale, which of them shall have the place of pre-eminence, it sufficeth for the glory and commendation of the beer that, here in our own country, ale giveth place unto it and that most part of our countrymen do abhor and abandon ale as a loathsome drink.

It was the hop that created the commercial brewing industry. Beer had a better flavour and had improved keeping qualities and could be produced on a larger scale. By the middle of the 16th century there were 26 commercial or common brewers in London, most of them based in Southwark, close to the Hop Exchange, where hops from Kent were bought and sold.

But old habits die hard. While brewers adopted the hop, they continued to use other ingredients from the past. When the Nethergate Brewery in Suffolk decided to brew a porter in the 1980s, its head brewer Dr Ian Hornsey found a recipe for London Porter dating from the 1750s, used by the large brewer Taylor Walker.

As well as brown malt, darker malts and hops, the recipe included coriander and bog myrtle. Dr Hornsey says he couldn't find any bog myrtle he should have asked my wife as she has grown it in our back garden but he did add ground coriander seeds. The result is a remarkable, spicy beer called Umbel Magna, the perfect companion for a curry. There were different demands in Kent: porters brewed in and around Faversham included Spanish liquorice imported through the flourishing harbour.

But such old practices were dying out. The hop became the sole agent for aroma and bitterness in beer as a result of the tumultuous changes in brewing in the 18th and 19th centuries. First came porter and its stronger version, stout, followed by India Pale Ale a century later. Both styles of beer, one dark, one bronze, were stored or vatted for long periods. Hops, in large quantities, were needed to stop infections turning the beer sour. India Pale Ale in particular, had to survive a three-month sea voyage from London or Liverpool to Bombay and Calcutta. It was both the hops and high levels of alcohol that enabled the beer to reach India in good condition, surviving not only storms at sea but great fluctuations in temperature. It was new and improved varieties of hops, such as the Fuggle and the Golding, still grown today, that was beer's best friend, with acids, tannins and resins warding off infection and imparting delightful aromas and flavour. The high levels of hops used in IPA did have one disadvantage: drinkers in India complained the beers were soporific. They probably didn't realise that hops are members of the same plant family as cannabis. Not surprisingly, the pale ales developed for the domestic market in the late 19th century contained lower hop levels.

If the future of English hops seemed assured in the 20th century, we should never underestimate the ability of the British to destroy the things they do best. A series of massive mergers in the 1960s and 1970s led to the creation of six giant national brewers who set about changing the face of beer, first with keg and then with lager. If you chill, filter and pasteurise beer, hop aroma is not your main concern and the national brewers began to abandon English hops and imported them from abroad. This process gathered pace as the brewers promoted lager. Lager is a more delicate beer than British ale and different types of hops are used. The Germans, with their usual pride and pomp, call their hops edel hopfen -- noble hops as a result of their fine aroma and subtle bitterness. There is a simple, basic difference between English hops and most other varieties: English hops are fertilised, the male hop is allowed to have his wicked way with his lady companion. In most other countries, the male hop is eradicated with all the zeal of the Spanish Inquisition hunting for heretics. As a result, English hops have a spicy, peppery, fruity and resinous character unique to this country.

That tradition was under threat. The first time I met Tony Redsell on his farm, in either the late 1970s or early 80s, it was a day of torrential rain and Tony was as gloomy as the weather about the future for hop growing. Many farmers in Kent were grubbing up their hops and planting apples instead. The real ale revolution brought hope back to hop farmers and important and innovative work started to be carried out in developing new varieties that are easier to pick and less prone to disease. England has led the way with hedgerow hops such as First Gold that climb to half the height of conventional varieties and are less labour intensive as a result. Boadicea is a new variety that needs fewer chemical sprays and pointed the way towards the development of organic hops that would chime with our green times.

And then came the body blow. The government, in the shape of Defra, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, announced in 2004 that it would stop funding the hop breeding programme led by Dr Peter Darby at Wye College. It was Peter and his colleagues who had produced both First Gold and Boadicea and now their work was threatened by Defra.

The reasons for the withdrawal of funding by Defra were risible. The department said its funds for research should not go to production but to those combating global warming. As my old maths teacher used to say despairingly when he handed me back a paper with nought out of a hundred, There must be a brain in there somewhere and I feel the same thought should be directed at Defra. Peter Darby's work IS helping the environment. English hops have to travel short distances to breweries, unlike hops imported from the United States, China and Australia. Most of the world's supply of organic hops come from New Zealand: in other words, they are packed and flown across the world to Britain, making a complete mockery of saving on carbon footprints.

The decision to stop funding Wye College was taken by Margaret Beckett at Defra. I was going to say it was her last act before leaving government to spend more time with her caravan but I noticed in last week's reshuffle that she is back but not Bachhus be praised at Defra.

There is hope. Thanks to the generosity of Shepherd Neame, as we saw earlier, Peter Darby has assembled a brilliant portfolio of traditional English hops for visitors to admire. And thanks also to the generosity of the English Hop Association and in particular Tony Redsell at China Farm Peter can continue his research into new hop varieties. But what an indictment of British government that this work has to be done without central funds while hops pour in from other countries.

My final plea is a simple one: use English hops. I don't say this in a jingoistic way. My great-great-grandfather came to this country from Germany and there's no doubt that beer and hops are in my genes. But I feel strongly that British beer should be brewed with English hops: they are a marriage made in heaven.

I understand why many smaller British brewers import hops: they are at the back of the queue where English hops are concerned and have to buy from abroad. While nationalisation is suddenly back in vogue, it would be a brave man who would call for the return of the Hop Marketing Board to centralise supply but we do need some form of co-operation between craft brewers to ensure equity of supply.

But just as I am optimistic about the future of traditional British beer, I am equally positive about the future of English hops, in spite of the best efforts of global brewers and the government. It's been a long journey from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to Kent in the 21st century but the hop has survived. Britain's craft brewers from regional producers such as Shepherd Neame to the tiniest minnow have the passion, the commitment and the love of good beer to ensure that hoppy, bitter beer in all its glory will continue to entrance us for years to come.