Hop
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a twining, rough-leaved vine of the nettle family. The common hop is native to Europe and North America . Hop vines are excellent arbor plants, but are cultivated usually for their loose, papery, fragrant catkins which are used in the brewing of beer. The valuable part of hops is the bitter principle contained in the granular powder on the scales and the inner shell of the tiny seed. It constitutes a sixth of the weight of the best hops. Hop yeast is the best also for raising bread. Southern England is famous for hops. Bavaria has a reputation for the best. Two regions of the United States raise excellent hops. The first extends from Maine to Iowa; the second from California to Oregon. The annual hop production of the United States is over 90,000,000 pounds, and is valued at $3,600,000. Hops are planted in hills. Each hill requires a pole ten to eighteen feet high, to support the vines. After the bearing season the vines die to the ground, the poles are stacked away for next year's use, and the field is cleared of old vines. The hop twines toward the right or with the sun; that is to say, the tip of the vine points toward the west when it is on the south side of the pole. Named in order of productivity for the year 1908, the leading hop countries of the world are Germany, England, the United States, Austria, Belgium, France, Russia, and Australia. The world's crop for the year 1905 was 274,626,000 pounds. In 1908 it was 208,000,000. See Bavaria ; Beer
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account puts hops in "the nettle family" and describes a belt of good hop country running "from Maine to Iowa"; both statements have since fallen away. Botanists now place Humulus in the Cannabaceae, alongside cannabis, and the eastern American hop industry was destroyed in the 1920s and 1930s by Prohibition and by downy mildew, leaving the Pacific Northwest "from California to Oregon" -- above all Washington's Yakima Valley -- as the American crop. The individual hill and its ten- to eighteen-foot pole, stacked away each winter, gave way to permanent wire trellises and mechanical picking machines, and the "bitter principle" in the lupulin powder is now measured precisely as alpha acids, with brewers buying pellets and extracts to specification. The craft-brewing boom since the 1980s has also made aroma varieties such as Cascade, bred in Oregon and released in 1972, commercially central in a way no 1910 grower would have predicted.
Written for this edition, 2026.