Fifty Years of Hop Farming. 
337 
able the dryers to regulate the temperature. These were not 
dreamed of by the last generation of planters. Old cockle-kilns 
have disappeared, even in the remotest parts of the " Wild " of 
Kent aud Sussex. Patent methods of drying have been adopted 
by a few planters ; but the ordinary mode is to dry the hops 
in a circular or square kiln, duly capped by a cowl to carry off 
the reek. 
The circular kilns, which are the most common, are from 18 
to 20 feet in diameter. At from 13 to 16 feet from the ground 
joists are introduced, from which a sharply-sloping roof begins. 
From this point to the cowl-capped top it is from 15 to 18 feet 
in height. Upon the joists horsehair cloth is stretched, where 
the hops are laid. Below there are either open stoves, or fire- 
places are set in brickwork and enclosed that the heat may be 
more concentrated upon the hops above. 
The hops are not laid so thickly upon the kilns in these 
days. There is not, therefore, so much moving them about and 
turning them over required while they are drying, and the work 
is completed in less time. It was formerly, in many cases, a 
kind of stewing process instead of a gradual desiccation as it 
should be, and as it is at present in the best-regulated "oast"- 
houses. 
Thus the hops come off the kiln more whole, and with much 
less loss of their valuable properties and essences. Being packed 
up at once, they do not waste their freshness in the air of the 
cooling-rooms. While there has been improvement generally 
in hop-drying, taking the country throughout, the process is 
not conducted upon scientific principles, and brewers complain 
frequently of the indifferent management of hops, entailing loss of 
essential properties, and causing them to keep badly. There has 
been, perhaps, more improvement in management in Worcester- 
shire and Herefordshire than in other parts of England, which 
makes hops from those counties particularly acceptable to brewers. 
Packing. 
In no branch of hop management has such radical alterations 
been made as in packing. They were in old times put into 
bags and into pockets. The former were 7 feet 6 inches long 
and 4 feet wide, of material nearly an inch in thickness, made 
of hemp, hay, and tow woven together. About 2 cwt. were 
put into these, especially brown, diseased, and inferior qualities. 
" Brown bags" formed the tail-end of most growths. 
Pockets are now alone used ; they are between 6 and 7 feet 
long and 3 feet wide, holding 1£ cwt., and being made of coarse 
vol. I. T. s. — 2 z 
