Poperinge - the Hop Harvest

   
    Poperinge is known as the 'Hop Capital' of Belgium and you will see 275 hectares of hops in the surrounding countryside.  The main varieties grown are Wye Target, Northern Brewer, Challenger and Hallertau.  For a very tasty and refreshing drink with a full-on taste of the hops you must sample Poperings Hommelbier, brewed by Van Eecke  just down the road in Watou - they use Brewer's Gold and Challenger (for bitterness) and Hallertau for the aroma.  (Hommel is a local word for hop.)
Every third year Poperinge holds a Hop Festival, in September, at the time of the harvest.  The next one is due in 2008.  In the town centre there are parades, bands, and floats with characters representing the harvest.  But the focus of any true beer-lover should be the aromatic green cones which are going to flavour our future brews. 
During the festival, you can visit a nearby hop farm to see harvesting methods old and new, and see the hops being prepared for shipment to the breweries.  These pictures were taken in September 2005 at Wally's farm, where you can also go for barbecue meals and the owner's Elvis impersonations - but that's another story!

Hops are climbing plants - the bines grow up wires supported by tall poles

So traditional harvesting required a man with a long pole to pull them down.

Then you need lots . . . and lots . . . and lots of people to do the laborious task of stripping the hop cones from the bines.

Some music always helps . . .
. . . but first light the pipe!

After hours of hard work . . .                with lots of tourists watching closely . . .  . . . this is all that's in your basket!
Time for mechanisation!  A tractor with a device to strip the bines from the poles, load them on the trailer, and take them back to the shed, and a machine Heath-Robinson would be proud of!.
The bines are attached to the conveyor . . . . . .which drags them into the machine . . . . . which strips off the cones.  They fall through to the moving belt below, and the waste is carried away.
You'll just have to imagine the rattling roar of the machinery and the clean smell of fresh hops. The cones go up to the drying floor . . .  . . heated by the furnace below.
The processed hops come down . . . . . . to where an open sack awaits. On the way they are professionally appraised by Jeannette and Anny . . . . . . while I just stand there looking decorative!
When the sack is full . . . . . . this young lady sews it up . . . . . . and checks the weight. From field to sack in minutes!


Although the modern process is efficient, and it's quite hypnotic to watch the huge machine stripping the cones from the bines, you can understand some older folk feeling nostalgic about the days when they used to go on hop-picking holidays.  It must have been a cheerful scene, with the music and the traditional costumes, and in spite of the hard work, there was a party atmosphere.  But today growers couldn't afford to pay armies of people to do the vast amount of manual work involved.  So we should be grateful that mechanisation means that our beer is still affordable. 
If you want to show your appreciation to the hop-pickers of old, why not raise a glass to them?  And to help you do it, Brouwerij de Bie has produced a special Plokkersbier (Pickers beer, in the local dialect)



And a PS from a year later - in September 2006 we shall be holding our own Shoreham Hop Festival, to be attended by crowds of up to 5 people, to pick the hop cones from the plant which we brought back from Poperinge last year and which is thriving in Sunny Sussex.  We'll need a few more before we set up in competition . . .
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