More hop history research

Thanks to my blog writing I've ended up doing some serious writing. And this in turn lead to me spending Friday afternoon looking through the archives held by Wye Hops Ltd at China Farm near Canterbury. 
I've written up my blog post on the Farnham White Bine hop as an article* for the journal of the Brewery History Society. Sadly the pictures are of the usual low standard regular readers of this blog will have come to expect. So the editor asked hop expert Peter Darby if he could find something better, and as well as sourcing some pictures Peter was kind enough to invite me over to further my research using the Wye archives.

The collection is a fantastic resource and I looked through hop text books going back nearly two centuries. Look at some of these delights:

That was enough to get me excited:

Here's the book I was after that I couldn't find on the internet:

Here's Percivals famous article:

And there was much more. I barely scratched the surface of the information on offer, but you'll be pleased to hear I found more fascinating facts about Farnham I'll bore you with later.








* Now with 16 more references! A bit more information on Peckham Williams! A slightly more upbeat ending! Surely a reason to join the Brewery History Society if you haven't already.