One of the concepts that Trubek discusses at some length in her book is that of terroir. You may be familiar with this concept, but if you are not, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines terroir as “the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character”. While it is a concept most commonly used within the wine industry, it is being increasingly used in discussions taking place around the craft beer. For example, a number of scientific studies show that the same hop varietal grown in two different places will exhibit different taste and aroma characteristics. A study conducted by scientists at Oregon State University showed that “Cascade hops grown in Oregon were characterized by strong citrus, floral, fruity, herbal and resinous aroma. Cascade hops from Washington displayed more tropical and sweaty aroma”. These findings have been replicated in numerous other studies, including one conducted in Italy. The reasons for these differences are quite simple, different soils and micro-climates impact hops differently. As noted by the Italian researchers, “the differences found in the hops were reflected in the beers, which were clearly recognized as distinct by a sensory panel.” In short, hops have terroir.
Approximately, 95% of all hops harvested in the United States are grown in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) states od Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The growth of craft breweries, however, has resulted in farmers outside of the PNW experimenting with hops as a crop. Their primary customers are local breweries. Hops are now grown in 30+ states outside the PNW. This provides beer drinkers in states such as California, Michigan, and Ohio to taste beer with locally grown hops. And, because of terroir, one can make the case that they are experiencing a s taste of place.
But hops are not the only local crop being used in the brewing of craft beer. Other locally sourced crops are also commonly used. Earlier this spring, I enjoyed a basil honey ale at one of my local breweries, Earnest Brew Works, whose ingredients included locally grown basil. Other examples from across the country abound. Island Brewing Company in Carpinteria, CA brew an avocado honey ale using locally sourced avocados, while Cape May Brewing Company of Cape May, NJ use local beach plums in the making of their Beach Plum IPA.
This basil honey ale from Earnest Brew Works in Toledo, OH included locally grown basil as one of its ingredients.
On a recent trip to Italy, I had an opportunity to enjoy another taste of place. I was attending a local food and beer festival in the small town of Lecce nei Marsi (population 1,694) in Italy’s Abruzzo region. One of the local beers available at the festival was an English Browm Ale whose ingredients included the faggiola – beech nuts from local beech trees. The beer, Moricento, is brewed by Beer Park Brewery. What makes Moricento special, at least in my eyes, is that the beech nuts come from ancient beech trees that are located in a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Beechnuts are an ingredient in Moricento English Brown Ale
Moricento – a beer whose ingredients include beech nuts
Lecce nei Marsi is located in the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park. The park covers 50,000 hectares, 60% of which is covered by beech forests. As noted above, the beech forests in the park are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is a somewhat an unusual World Heritage site, as it is part of a chain of beech forests that are spread across eighteen European countries. According to UNESCO, these “ancient beech forests are primeval beech forests that have changed very little over the centuries, because they are preserved in areas that are difficult to reach and because beech trees easily adapt to diverse climatic and geographical conditions. Among the various specimens, there are beech trees over 500 years old”. Thus, when you taste Moricento, you might argue that not only are you sampling a taste of place, but perhaps also a taste of the region’s natural history.
The ancient beech forests of Europe (Source: UNESCO)
Enjoying a taste of Moricento beer at the local food and beer festival in Lecce nei Marse
I was in Hillsboro, WI last month.. I was there to participate in the 10th Annual Wisconsin Hop Seminar. The seminar, which brings together craft brewers, hop growers, and university researchers was held at the Hillsboro Brewing Company. My role at the seminar was to give the keynote address on the impact of craft brewing on the American hop industry. Hops is a subject that I have written about in previous blog entries, which you can read here, here, and here.
Hillsboro is a ninety-minute drive north of Madison. I flew into Madison, where I spent the night, before driving with my colleague and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, Steve Deller, to Hillsboro. Hillsboro is a town of just over 1,400 people, located in west-central Wisconsin. It is known as the “Czech capital” of Wisconsin. While the earliest immigrants arriving in Hillsboro came from Germany, the Czechs started to arrive in the mid-1800s. Attracted by a landscape that reminded them of home, the Czechs brought with them their culture, food, and traditions. Today, the town’s Czech heritage is celebrated with the annual Cesky Den Festival.
Hillsboro Brewing Company is owned by the husband and wife team of Snapper and Kim Verbsky. Hillsboro is a relatively new brewery, only being established in 2014. In 2018, the brewery’s success (production went from ~350 barrels in 2017 to ~1,000 barrels in 2018) meant that it had to relocate to a larger facility and it is now housed in a 28,000 square foot building, that was formerly home to a Carnation Milk plant. This is where the hop seminar took place.
I must admit I was impressed with what Kim and Snapper were doing with their new brewing facility. It is a two-level building. The upper level is in the process of being renovated to house an event space. Wedding receptions will be a primary target market for this space. As I walked around the soon-to-be event space, I thought about the fact that there are only a little over 1,400 folks who live in town. This is clearly a space designed to attract out-of-towners. That thought also made me consider the brewery’s capacity to attract beer tourists.
The upper level of Hillsboro Brewery is being renovated and, when complete, will be rented out as event space.
Brewing occurs on the ground level of the brewery. Hillsboro produced approximately a thousand barrels of beer in 2018. It has the space to grow its brewing capacity, should the need arise. What particularly impressed me was that the owners clearly had respect for their building’s history. On display, there is a collage with old newspaper articles and photographs highlighting the building’s former life as a Carnation milk facility. I like it when brewery owners have an appreciation for and celebrate their building’s history. At Hillsboro, they also brew a beer that recognizes the building’s heritage. Contented Cow is a Milk Stout. In 1907, the founder of Carnation, E. A. Stuart introduced the phrase, “Carnation condensed milk, the milk from contented cows.” I sampled Contented Cow while at Hillsboro, and have to say that I really enjoyed it.
Collage highlighting the building’s history as a Carnation milk facility A photograph of the building when it was a milk facility
There were approximately fifty in attendance at the seminar. The vast majority were hop farmers. There were a couple of brewers in attendance, including Dan Carey, co-owner and brewmaster of the legendary New Glarus Brewing Company. Dan was also one of the seminar’s speakers. My presentation focused on how the growth of craft brewing was impacting the hop industry. Among other things, craft breweries have created a demand for locally-grown hops.
The Program for the 10th Annual Wisconsin Hop SeminarMy presentation at the Wisconsin Hop Seminar
In preparing for my presentation I discovered quite a few things about the Wisconsin hop industry, including its history. During the second half of the eighteen-century, Wisconsin emerged as a major center of hop production. Production peaked in 1870, when the state produced approximately five million pounds of hops (Figure 1). The center of Wisconsin’s hop production was Sauk County, in the southwestern part of the state. I passed through Sauk County on the drive from Madison to Hillsboro. Hops first started to be grown in Sauk County in 1842. The rainfall and good drainage made Sauk County and ideal location for growing hops. Wisconsin’s reign as an important center of hop production did not last long, however. By 1880, annual production in the state had decreased to two million pounds. Production continued to fall and by the turn of the century very few hops were grown in the state (Figure 1).
Source: Rumney, 1997/98Source: Rumney, 1997/98
In recent years hop farming has returned to Wisconsin. Most of the demand for Wisconsin hops come from Wisconsin craft breweries. There are over one hundred and sixty craft breweries in the state, and a growing number of them are using Wisconsin grown hops as an ingredient in some of their beers. As noted by Erika Janik in an article in Edible Milwaukee, “interest in local ingredients for local craft beer is driving a resurgence in the cultivation of hops and barley for brewing in Wisconsin.” According to the Hop Growers of America, in 2018 there were 297 acres of hops harvested in Wisconsin. This placed Wisconsin sixth in the country, behind Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Michigan, and New York. There are a lot of challenges associated with growing hops outside of the Pacific Northwest. There are the initial start-up costs, which can run ~$10,000 per acre. In addition, there are harvesting and post-harvesting processing costs; the latter include the costs of drying, pelletizing, storage etc. For small hop farms, as most start-ups are, achieving critical economies of scale is close to impossible. This make it difficult to compete on price with growers from the Pacific Northwest, particularly when it comes to the more common varieties of hops. Hop farmers in states such as Wisconsin have to figure out which hops will give them a competitive edge. In the long-term this might mean developing hop strains that are unique to the region, or by leveraging the concept of terroir; the idea that local Wisconsin hops provide unique flavors and aromas that are influenced by local soil and climate. Wisconsin hop growers may also be able to capitalize on the geographic proximity they enjoy viz-viz Wisconsin breweries – this proximity allows breweries to receive whole-cone hops that are delivered within hours of being harvested. Upon arrival at the brewery, these so-called ‘wet hops’ can be incorporated immediately into the brewing process. Wet-hop beers allow you to experience the true hop flavor the hop and have been described as “mellow, delicate, and freshly vibrant”. By definition, wet-hop beers are only available during the harvest season, which generally falls in August and September.
The hop farmers that I met and chatted with in Hillsboro were an impressive group. It is clear that they are passionate about hops. All are new to the industry, but are keen to learn, and are determined to become successful hop farmers.
This is my third blog entry that deals specifically with the topic of hops. You can read the other two entries here and here.
Hops are one of the four essential ingredients of beer – the other three are water, malted barley, and yeast. As such, hops serve a number of functions. First, they act as a bittering agent. Second, they contribute to a beer’s aroma. Third, they have preservative qualities. There are three basic types of hops – alpha, aroma, and dual purpose. The primary function of alpha hops is to provide a beer with its bitterness, while aroma hops, as the name suggests, contribute to the aroma of a beer. Dual purpose hops combine bittering and aroma characteristics.
I’ve been reading quite a bit about hops recently, as well as looking at some data, trying to identify how demand for hops might be changing in response to the growing popularity of craft beer. This interest stems from a project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project, which includes colleagues from Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, and Simon Fraser University, is concerned with isolating the existence of what are termed agricultural clusters in the United States. As a piece of this much larger project, I have been looking at the impact that the growth of craft beer has had on the hops industry. In my research, I believe that I have identified three major impacts:
An overall incease in demand for hops
Demand for a greater diversity of hop varieties
The geographic expansion of hop production, out of the industry’s Pacific Northwest core.
Let me now examine each of these in turn.
Incresed Demand for Hops
Not surprisingly, the volume of hops produced and used in a given year varies. A number of factors impacts these volumes, including weather conditions and fluctuations in demand from breweries. The chart below shows the number of pounds of hops held by growers, dealers, and brewers on March 1, for each year between 1948 and 2018. What is particularly noticeable about this graph is the sharp increase in hop stocks held by these three groups, starting in 2011. This increase corresponds quite nicely with the significant increase in the number of craft breweries that started around the same time (see second chart).
So why might more craft breweries result in an increased demand for hops? Well, a major reason is that many of the styles of beer brewed by craft breweries use more hops than the beers produced by macro-brewers such as Anheuser-Busch. A typical craft beer (if there is indeed such a thing) contains up to five times more hops than a macro beer. The first chart below shows the number of pounds of hops used to produce a keg of different styles of beer. Lagers and pilsners, the most common type of beer produced by macro-brewers, use 0.19 and 0.31 pounds of hops per keg respectively. All of the other styles of beer shown (except Ambers and Hefeweizen) use more hops. For example, IPAs use a pound of hops per keg, while Imperial Stouts and Imperial IPAs use 0.87 and 3.8 pounds per keg respectively. As the second chart below shows, IPAs (which tend to use a lot of hops) represent over twenty-five percent of the American craft beer market.
Another feature of craft breweries is that they tend to use a greater variety of different types of hops than macro-breweries. As noted above, there are three basic types of hop – alpha, aromatic, and dual purpose. Macro-brewers, such as Anheuser-Busch, use primarily alpha hops when brewing beers such as Budweiser. Craft brewers, in contrast, use larger amounts of aroma and dual purpose hops. For example, an examination of types of hops harvested in the state of Washington (the country’s leading hop producer) in 2007, shows that 73.2% of the harvested acreage were alpha hops. By 2017, alpha hops accounted for only 26% of the harvested acreage in the state. In contrast, aroma and dual purpose hops accounted for 40% and 25.9% of Washington hops in 2017, respectively (the numbers do not add up to 100% here because data disclosure rules meant that there were some hops that could not be placed in one of the three categories). This represents a fundamental shift in hop production, which reflects a fundamental shift in demand.
Another way that I analyzed the hop data was to examine what I term the Four Hop Concentration Ratio. This is a simple number that indicates the percentage of hop production accounted for by the top four hop varieties. Again, I looked at data from the state of Washington. In 2007, the top four varieties accounted 71.1% of hops harvested in Washington. In 2017, the top four varieties accounted for only 39.1%. These numbers suggest that Washington farmers were growing a greater variety of different types of hop in 2017, than in 2007. When I examined the top four hop varieties in each of the two years, I noticed another important shift. In 2007, the top four hops harvested in Washington were Zeus, Columbus/Tomahwak, Willamette, and Galena. Three of these four (Zeus, Columbus/Tomahawk, and Galena) are alpha hops. Only Willamette are aroma hops. In 2017, the top four hops harvested in Washington were Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe, and Citra. None of these are alpha hops. Cascade and Citra are aroma hops, while Centennial and Simcoe are dual purpose.
The demand for diversity in hops reflects the diversity of beer styles and flavors/aromas that craft brewers produce. Different styles of beer require different combinations of different hop varieties. Even within the same style (e.g. IPA) individual brewers will combine different hop varieties as they seek to attain a particular flavor profile. Particular hop varieties are suited for Brewing specific styles of beer. For example, Azacca hops, which are alpha hops and impart notes of citrus, mango, and pineapple are ideal for pale ales and IPAs. Willamette, in contrast, are aroma hops that have floral, fruity, and herbal notes and are most commonly used in pale ales, bitters, and stouts. And of course, in the hands of a creative and innovative brewer, who knows what hop varieties will be combined with what other hop varieties, to generate exciting tastes and aromas. Craft breweries tend to be quite open in revealing the hop varieties that they use in a particular beer. In fact, displaying the hop varieties used in a particular brew, on the can or bottle, is not uncommon. My oldest daughter bought me a variety pack of beer for my birthday last month. Two of the beers were from Platform Beer Company in Columbus, OH. One, Chasing the Horizon, was a Black New England IPA, while the other, Seeing Sounds, was a small batch IPA. On the cans were the hops used in the brewing of each beer. In the case of Chasing the Horizon, four hop varieties were used – Callista (aroma), Simcoe (dual purpose), Eukanot (aroma), and Mosain (aroma) were used. For Seeing the Sounds, the hops were Galena (alpha), El Dorado (dual purpose), Citra (aroma), and Centennial (dual purpose).
Platform Beer Company cans displays the hops used in each beer
Geographic Expansion of Hop Production
A final trend that I have noted in my research on hops is the geographic expansion of hop production. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho represent the heartland of American hop production. In 2017, these three states accounted for 95.5% of the acres of hops harvested in the United States. As few years earlier, in 2014, the three Pacific Northwest states had accounted for 97.7% of the acres of hops harvested. Gradually, in recent years, farmers in states outside of the Pacific Northwest have started to grow hops. Hops are now grown in twenty-nine states across the country. After, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, the top three states for hop production are Michigan, New York , and Colorado. The map below shows hop growing States in 2017. Washington, Oregon, and Idaho are in red, and the orange states are the other states growing hops. The expansion of hop production outside of its core states is driven by demand from some craft brewers for locally-grown hops. At the same time, farmers see an opportunity to expand and diversify their portfolio of crops.
States Growing Hops in 2017
So, it appears that the increasing popularity of craft beer is changing the hop industry. Not only is there a demand for more hops, but there is a demand for a greater diversity of hop varieties. In particular, there is an increased demand for aroma and dual purpose hops, which, together, are now more popular than alpha hops. Finally, production of hops is increasing outside of the Pacific Northwest, as more brewers demand locally-grown hops.
I’ve been reading a lot about the hop industry recently. My interest in hops at this particular point in time stems from the fact that I am working with some colleagues from Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, and Simon Fraser University, on a project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The primary goal of the project is to identify which agricultural commodities exhibit knowledge-driven locational clustering and, where such clustering exists to isolate the specific underlying drivers.
Part of the project involves doing case studies of particular specialty crops, with a view to understanding the geography of their production. With my interest in the brewing industry, I volunteered to lead a case study of the American hop industry. I was particularly interested in documenting the impact of the growing popularity of craft beer on hop production – not only changes in which varieties of hops are being grown, but also where these hops are being grown.
As I started searching on Google Scholar for scholarly pieces on the hop industry, I came across a couple of papers that explored the decline of the hop industry in various parts of England during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of those pieces, interestingly enough, was by a young Assistant Lecturer of Geography at the University of Bristol, by the name of David Harvey. As my Geographer friends know, Harvey would go on to become one of most influential geographic thinkers of the twentieth century. It is interesting that one of his early papers examined changing land use patterns in Kent’s hop industry.
Another paper I found was written by Paige Raibmon. It explored the hop picking industry in the Puget Sound area of Washington in the late nineteenth century. It focused, in particular, on indigenous women who worked in the industry. In the northern hemisphere, hop harvesting lasts for approximately six weeks, starting in mid-August. During this period, there is a need for seasonal labor. As a result, thousands of people from the surrounding regions would migrate to the Puget Sound. These included large numbers of indigenous peoples. Such was the demand for hop pickers in Washington state, that an estimated twenty-five percent of British Columbia’s indigenous population traveled to the Puget Sound during the hop harvest. Of those who migrated south, the number of women outnumbered men. The indigenous women, it turned out, were particularly hard working and adept at picking hops. Indeed, popular accounts of the time often noted the industriousness of indigenous women. Writing in 1898, Susan Lord Currier, observed that:
“the Indians, on the other hand, gather the hops they pick into woven baskets. They pick with a deftness and skill rarely equaled by the whites. Even old Indian women in their dotage and almost blind, manage to pick their three boxes a day, while the white man or woman who picks two boxes a day is considered an expert”.
While working in the hop fields, the indigenous hop pickers became something of a tourist attraction. Every day, hundreds of visitors traveled to the hop growing regions. They did so for the opportunity to see “authentic Indians”. They traveled by carriage and interurban passenger trains, and stayed in hotels that had been built, by entrepreneurs, near the hop fields. Indigenous hop pickers would often pass through Seattle on their way to and from the hop fields. In Seattle, they would stop-off and sell handmade wares such as baskets from the sidewalk. Locals and tourists alike would also pose for photographs with the indigenous travelers, with the latter receiving payment in return.
Indian hop pickers, Puget Sound, WA, circa 1895-1900. Photograph by Frank La Roche (1853-1934).
George Orwell’s “A Clergyman’s Daughter”
As I was reading Raibmon’s account of indigenous hop pickers in Washington, the name of one of my favorite authors, George Orwell, popped into my head. I have read almost everything that Orwell has written, including his essays. Like most people that have read it, I found Orwell’s 1984 to be a particular haunting piece of work. Another one of Orwell’s novels is A Clergyman’s Daughter. Published in 1935, it tells the story of Dorothy Hare (a clergyman’s daughter) who suffers a bout of amnesia, and as a result, ends up wandering the English countryside with three hobos – Nobby, Charlie, and, Flo. The four of them decide to head to Kent (the same part of the country that the aforementioned David Harvey wrote about) in southeastern England to seek employment picking hops. In telling the story of Dorothy and her three friends, Orwell provides some interesting insights into the life of a hop picker in 1930s England. Most hop pickers fell into one of two broad categories. First, there were the Gypsies. Second, there were individuals and their families from poorer parts of London, who regarded hop picking as a working holiday. During the hop harvest, they descended on Kent and other hop growing regions of England. Indeed, by the 1870s special trains were laid-on to take families from London to the hop fields.
Pickers worked six days a week. Sunday was a day-off. The work day started at 8am and ended between 5pm and 6pm; this period included two meal breaks. While picking hops was not a particularly difficult task, and was quite mechanical in nature, the tiny thorns that were found on the stem of the plant meant that the pickers’ fingers were soon bleeding in multiple places. “Measurers” would make their rounds twice a day. Their job was to measure the number of bushels each group (often a group comprised a family) had picked. Pickers were paid by the bushel. There were tricks that the pickers learned, which were designed to maximize their income. For example, while “foreign” material such as leaves and stalks in the collecting bins were undesirable, a certain amount was tolerated. The gypsies were particularly adept at knowing how much of the contents of their bins could be foreign material, without jeopardizing their wages.
Pickers lived in tents, barns, and stables. Conditions, from a hygiene perspective, were generally poor; even being described as “squalid”. The camps became breeding grounds for a variety of diseases. In 1849, cholera took the lives of forty-three hop pickers on a single farm. So poor were the conditions that, in 1866, two priests established the Society for Employment and Improved Lodgings for Hop Pickers. During the second half of the nineteenth century hopper huts became increasingly common. A typical hopper hut was nine feet by nine feet and was made from a variety of materials, including timber (surrounded by corrugated metal), brick, and breeze blocks.
A hopper hut near Lamberhurst, Kent. This photograph comes from the Oast House Archive.
Orwell’s account of hop picking in his novel was based on actual experience. In 1931 Orwell went hop picking in Kent. He recounted this experience in an essay, titled Hop Picking, published later that year (under Orwell’s real name, Eric Blair) in the New Statesman & Nation. While Orwell bemoaned the low rate of pay received by hop pickers, there is a sense from reading his New Statesman essay that he enjoyed the work:
“One can talk and smoke as one works, and on hot days there is no pleasanter place than the shady lanes of hops, with their bitter scent – an unutterably refreshing scent, like a wind blowing from oceans of cool beer.”
Hop-picking in Yalding, Kent, England, UK, 1944 Mr and Mrs Boulton and their three year old son Billy pick hops on a farm in Yalding, Kent. The Boultons are placing the picked hop cones into a large ‘bin’, which is made from canvas and supported on a wooden frame. This photograph is from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.
W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage”
Another author who describes hop picking in Kent is W. Somerset Maugham. He does so towards the end of his 1915 novel, Of Human Bondage. While providing a less detailed description of hop picking than Orwell, Maugham’s account is consistent with Orwell’s. Here is a passage from Maugham’s work:
“They were all hard at work, talking and laughing as they picked. They sat on chairs, on stools, on boxes, with their baskets by their sides, and some stood by the bin throwing the hops they picked straight into it. There were a lot of children about and a good many babies, some in makeshift cradles, some tucked up in a rug on the soft brown dry earth. The children picked a little and played a great deal. The women worked busily, they had been pickers from childhood, and they could pick twice as fast as foreigners from London. They boasted about the number of bushels they had picked in a day, but they complained you could not make money now as in former times: then they paid you a shilling for five bushels, but now the rate was eight and even nine bushels to the shilling.”
Today, hop harvesting is a highly mechanized process. As is the case with many other industries, the worker had been replaced by technology. I got to witness modern-day hop harvesting and processing first hand in September 2015 when I spent a day in Washington’s Yakima Valley. I watched hops arrive at a processing facility, in trucks, still attached to the bines. The bines were fed into a machine, which then separated out the hops.
Hops arriving at a hop processing facility in Washington’s Yakima Valley
Hop bines are fed into a machine which separates the hops from the bines
Separated hops
For individuals looking to experience manual hop picking, there are modern-day opportunities to do so. In Essex, northeast of London, it is possible to go hop picking for a day, thanks to an initiative (Company Drinks) started by artist Kathrin Böhm in 2014. Company Drinks is an:
“arts project and community drinks enterprise that links east London’s history of ‘going picking’ with a full drinks production cycle: from picking to bottling, branding to trading and reinvesting”.
The goal is to:
“combine local heritage (‘going picking’ and the area’s agricultural and industrial past) with local resources (spare fruit, growing spaces), local skills (recipe ideas, specialist and localised knowledge, drinks production) and a local economy.”
During hop harvesting season, individuals can go to local hop fields and pick hops by hand. The hops are then taken to Kernel Brewery in London, where they are used to brew somewhere in the region of nine thousand bottles of a one-off beer.
So there it is – the humble hop. As I drink a beer, particularly an India Pale Ale, I never give much thought to the idea that the hop that plays such a critical part in its flavor and aroma has such a fascinating historical underpinning. But it does. And it is a history, of which I have barely scratched the surface here. There is, as my research demonstrated to me, quite a lot written about the history of the hop industry – particularly its economic and social history. It is a fascinating history, and one well worth delving into.
Further Reading:
Blair, Eric. 1931. Hop Picking. New Statesman & Nation, 17th October.
Harvey, David. 1963. Locational change in the Kentish hop industry and the analysis of land use patterns. Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), Volume 33, December, pp. 123-144.
Maugham, William Somerset. 1915. Of Human Bondage. New York: The Modern Library Publishers (read chapters CXVIII and CCIX).
Raibmon, Paige. 2006.The practice of everyday colonialism: Indigenous women at work in the hop fields and tourist industry of Puget Sound. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Volume 3, Issue 3, pp. 23-56.
Earlier this month I was in Seattle, Washington. The occasion was the 4th Beeronomics Conference. This biennial event brings together academics and industry insiders to present research and exchange ideas on various aspects of the beer industry. It was a Continue reading The Yakima Valley→
