574 
Management of Hops. 
which is best done by keeping them packed up close after 
drying : for when the dried hops are allowed to accumulate in 
the floor, they are obliged to be laid thicker, and it is then with 
great difficulty they are got sufficiently cool to tread without 
mudging. Some planters that I know make it a ride to get one 
oasting trod up before the next comes ofT the hah, having all the 
room for each oasting to cool in. They should, if possible, 
unless there is a great quantity of cooling-room, be trod up, at the 
longest, the first oasting before the third comes off, and so to 
continue. If a planter has a wish to mix a quantity of hops, and 
has a roomy stowage or cooling-room, or any other place M here 
the hops will lie dry and not much exposed to the air, he may 
keep them until he has done or got the quantity he wished to 
mix, and then turn them up together and tread them, having a 
few spread abroad near the bagging-hole to cool as they tread 
them. If hops get too cool, and particularly when scarcely dried 
enough, they become clammy, will go well under the feet of the 
treader, but there is no rise or spring in them : such are not so 
saleable. Those generally come best in the sample, both to the 
smell and touch, that are got cool and trod up soon after they are 
dried as above described. The most general method of packing 
hops — and the only one, until within the last few years — is to 
tread them with the feet ; a hole is generally made at one end of 
the cooling-floor, and with a frame and curb raised about a foot 
rd)ove the level of the floor ; a round hoop being first fastened in 
at the top of the bag, it is let down in the hole, the hoop resting 
on the curb — it being a little larger all around, it cannot slip 
through. The bag is thus slung from the ground, when a man 
gets in and treads them, a boy putting them in with a basket or 
large scuppet, and when it is full the hops are sewed in with 
large twine, which is called coping up ; the bag is then let down 
to the floor below by taking away the lever with which it had 
been raised above the curb for coping. Hops are packed either 
in bags or pockets, as the planter may consider best ; the 
brownest and strongest hops are generally put in bags, the finest 
coloured and first pickings generally in pockets ; but there are 
several Mid-Kent planters who universally put all their hops in 
bags, many or most of which consist of the Golding variety : 
such are mostly bought by the same merchants and used by the 
same brewers every 3'ear. There are not so many bags packed 
annually, in proportion to the growth, as there v/as thirty or forty 
years, or even twenty years back ; for although they keep best 
in bags, the weight of the package is much more in proportion 
to the weight of hops it contains than it is in pockets, which is one 
reason they are not generally so saleable, and consequently not 
so many packed. 
The weight of bagingas allowed by law is 1 lb. to every 10 lbs. 
