Hops are an essential to the brewer, not only keeping the beer and giving it an exquisite flavour, but also assisting, if we may be pardoned for using a technical term in a work intended to be anything but technical, to break down the fermentation.
Hops are valuable according as they contain much or little of a yellow powder called lupuline, and technically known as “condition,” which is deposited in minute yellow adhesive globules underneath the {81} bracts of the flower tops, and amounts to from 20 per cent. to 30 per cent. of the dry hops. This powder has a powerful aromatic smell, and is bitter to the taste. It contains hop resin, bitter acid of hops (flavour familiar to bitter beer drinkers), tannic acid, and hop oils, the chemical composition of which is not accurately known. Hops contain most lupuline when the flower is fully matured. Year-old hops only command about half the price of new. Those two years old are called “old-olds,” and are still less valuable. After having been five years in store they are worthless to brewers. Nearly all hops intended to be kept are more or less (the less the better) subjected to the fumes of sulphur, which, oxidising the essential oil, converts it into valerianic acid, and combines with the sulphur to form a solid body. Thus the oil, which would otherwise be the cause of mould, is destroyed, and the hops can be kept. We believe it is the practice of the best brewers to use a mixture of new and old hops, the latter being slightly sulphured, so slightly, indeed, that the smell of the sulphur cannot be detected.
Much has been written on the injurious effects of sulphuring, both to the fermentation and the health of beer-drinkers, and some people have very strong views on the subject. In 1855 a commission, which included Liebig among its members, was appointed by the Bavarian Government to inquire into the matter. After experiments which lasted over a period of two years, a report was issued in which it was stated that in the opinion of the commissioners, sulphuring was beneficial to the hops, and in no way prejudicial to the fermentation. In 1877, a method was made known of preserving hops without sulphur. The oil which prevents the hops from keeping was separated from them by a chemical process, and bottled. The hops were then pressed and kept in the usual way. When required for brewing, the hops and oil could again be united by adding ten or twelve drops of the latter to every twenty-two gallons of beer. This system does not seem to have found favour with hop merchants.
Aloes have occasionally been used to restore decayed hops, though with such poor success that we should hardly think the experiment was often repeated. Professor Bradly, a Cambridge professor of botany, wrote as follows:—“I cannot help taking notice here of a method which has been used to stale and decayed hops, to make them recover their bitterness, which is to unbag them, and sprinkle them with aloes and water, which, I have known, has spoiled great quantities of drink about London; for even where the water, the malt, the brewer, {82} and the cellars are each good, a bad hop will spoil all: so that every one of these particulars should be well chosen before brewing, or else we must expect a bad account of our labour.”
The age of hops is known by their appearance, odour, and feel. New unsulphured hops, for instance, when rubbed through the hand feel oily. In their first year they are of a bright green colour, have an aromatic smell and the lupuline is a bright yellow. In the second year they get darker, have a slightly cheesy odour, and the lupuline becomes a golden yellow. In the third year the lupuline is a dark yellow, the smell being about the same as in the second year.
In the hedges about Canton is found a variety of hop growing wild. It has been named the Humulus Japonicus. “Although this species,” says Seemann, in his Botany of the Voyage of H.M.S. Herald, “was published many years ago by Von Siebold and Zuccarini, we still find nearly all our systematic works asserting that there is only one species of Humulus, as there seems to be only one species of Cannabis. This, however, is a very good species, at once distinguished from the common Hop by the entire absence of those resinous spherical glands, with which the scales of the imbricated heads of the latter are scattered, and to which they owe their value in the preparation of beer, making the substitution of the one for the other for economical purposes an impossibility.”
So much then for the first and principal use of hops—and yet a few lines more on the same subject; from Christopher Smart’s poem of the Hop Garden:—
Be it so. But Ceres, rural Goddess, at the best Meanly supports her vot’ry, enough for her If ill-persuading hunger she repell, And keep the soul from fainting: to enlarge, To glad the heart, to sublimate the mind And wing the flagging spirits to the sky, Require the united influence and aid Of Bacchus, God of Hops, with Ceres joined, ’Tis he shall generate the buxom beer.
But hops have other uses than the generation of “the buxom beer.” The discovery, which we consider an important one, was made a few years back that hop-bine makes excellent ensilage. The subject was {83} first mentioned, so far as we know, in a letter to The Field of December 6th, 1884, from A. L., probably, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq., of Aylesford. The writer gave an account of the opening of a silo, in one compartment of which had been placed eight tons of hop-bines, in the beginning of the previous September. An account of the experiment was also sent by a visitor at the farm, from whose letter the following extract seems to us well worth perusal:—“The hop-bine is at present an entirely waste material, except for littering purposes; and not a few of the local farmers were anxious to see how it would turn out, and whether stock would eat the hop-bine ensilage or not. No experiment could be more satisfactory. The apparent condition and smell of a great deal of it was even superior to that of several of the other varieties; and when a bag of it was taken to the homestead and offered to some fattening steers, which had been well fed just before, and were not in the least hungry, they devoured it with great alacrity, and seemed heartily to enjoy the new food; consequently this will be good news to hop-growers.”
Early in ’85, the following important letter on the subject appeared in the Kentish Gazette, from Mr. T. M. Hopkins, Lower Wick, Worcester:—