16 



and otherwise alters their natural tint. Probably the process is 

 illegal, but it is nevertheless practised throughout the country as a 

 matter of course, and I venture to say unsulphured or unbleached 

 samples would not sell so readily or so well as sulphured ones. 

 This is the reverse of what holds on the Continent of Europe. 

 Sulphured hops there (except when prepared for the foreign market) 

 are more difficult to dispose of, and the fact of their being sulphured 

 is looked upon as evidence that the samples were faulty in some 

 respect. 



It is possible that the sulphuring process may be of real use in 

 preventing the resins and oil from oxidation, or in destroying 

 colouring matter which might affect pale ales deleteriously. It is 

 however practised, and the process was originally adopted for the 

 purpose of giving a fictitious colour to the sample. Strongly 

 sulphured hops, especially when picked very green, possess a colour 

 which is attractive in some way to the brewers or their purchasing 

 agents, and growers have frequently been advised by authorities in 

 the Borough to sulphur more extensively during the drying. 

 Brewers should judge their samples of hops more on the lines 

 previously suggested, and keep the question of colour in the back- 

 ground. In fact, exceptionally clean, pale and delicate-looking 

 samples I should suspect as being unripe or belonging to a " silvery " 

 wilding race with few lupulin glands in them, and not until I was 

 satisfied as to the quantity, maturity, and full development of these 

 glands should I be inclined to purchase. 



The colour of the small green leaves of the hop in commercial 

 samples is useful as a guide to good or bad drying. In samples 

 properly dried they are of a fresh, lively green, similar to a healthy 

 leaf freshly picked; in coddled or burnt hops they are a dirty 

 brownish or olive-green 



