Kent is a patchwork of smallholdings separated by rivers and country lanes, woodlands and orchards, farms and cricket fields. There are the old castles, old churches, and old pubs, and then there are the old oast houses, which tell you that this place—“the garden of England”—is where hops come from.
The southeasternmost county of England, Kent is bordered by the North Sea and is, in some places, within view of France. White chalk cuts across the top of the county as the North Downs, passing under East Kent before soaring above the English Channel as the White Cliffs of Dover. That chalk leads inland to the Weald of Kent, first as a valley of sandstone and then of clay, and the land rises again into the rolling hills of the High Weald, with its ancient forests. The red brick and tall white peaks of the oast houses, where the growers once dried the freshly picked hops, are the defining human addition to the landscape.
This is the land that gave us Fuggle and Golding. This is the land where half of England’s hops still grow. This is the land which has had more influence on the aroma, flavor and bitterness of beer—all beer—than any other in the world.
Fuggle and Golding have defined British Ale since the Victorian Era. Fuggle brings the base notes, bitter herbs, and a crisp, cool freshness, while Golding gives honey—the growers say a good Golding is a sweet Golding—dried spice, and a warm, summery high note. Their contrasting characters complement each other like salt and vinegar on a bag of still-warm chips.
These queenly English hops have been part of the collective national palate for many generations, and they remain the country’s most distinguished varieties—distinctive, restrained, elegant, and enigmatic, and far from the explicit fruitiness of most New World, 21st-century hops.
As a result, Fuggle and Golding have a somewhat old-fashioned reputation, resigning them—almost—to their role in traditional Bitters, and not in exciting IPAs. Only they are in your IPAs.
Look at the hop family tree. The direct descendants of Fuggle and Golding—the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—include Citra, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Nelson Sauvin, and so many others, meaning that almost every beer you drink will have something in it that leads back to these two hops.
This is the story of how hops come to be. Of how they are the products of their parents, of the land and weather, of disease and technology, of changing tastes and priorities.
It’s the story of how two hops grown in Kent have influenced the world of beer in immeasurable ways.
Flemish farmers introduced hops into Kent some 500 years ago. Their Flemish Red Bine hops were considered coarse and not good for brewing, but through natural crossbreeding with wild English hops, which have been part of Britain’s flora since before the Roman era, and through selection by farmers, the quality improved such that by the 18th century distinct new varieties were noted: The Wild Garlick Hop, Long Square Garlick Hop, Long White, Oval Hop, plus two White Bines, and a Grey Bine.
Appearance characterized the hops, and the color of the bine became the indicator of quality: the paler it was, the higher it was regarded. Green was good, gray was better, white was the best.
Hop growing later spread from Kent into the neighboring counties of Sussex and Surrey, and north into the farmlands of Worcestershire and Herefordshire in the Midlands. Today, half of English hops are grown in Kent, and the other half across Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
Farnham, in Surrey—at the western end of the chalk North Downs—was a productive hop-growing area in the 18th century. It was there that a Mr. Peckham-Williams planted a white-bine “Grape” hop—Grape seems to refer to a pale and small hop flower, or perhaps one which ripened late in the season—which was particularly good, and came to be known as the Farnham White Bine.
The Farnham White Bine was a highly prized hop—and priced highly at auction. Growers from around England took cuttings and planted them, essentially cloning the Farnham hop, then renaming it after their locations. They became Mathon Whites in the Midlands, and Canterbury Whitebines in East Kent, and more cuttings were taken from those varieties. It’s from here that the first English landrace hops—those adapted to best suit the land in which they grow—should be traced.
Around the 1760s, near Malling in mid Kent, a farmer growing cuttings from a Canterbury Whitebine noticed a “hill of extraordinary quality and productiveness.” The hop had taken on novel characteristics in its new home, and it was named “Mr. Golding’s Hop” after the grower.
Cuttings from Mr. Golding’s hops were planted across East Kent, where they prospered in the chalk earth, and within the area’s peculiar microclimate. The region lies in the rain shadow of the Downs to one side and is buffeted by the salt-laden winds coming in off the North Sea to the other, producing colder winters, drier springs, and hotter summers compared to the rest of Kent.
The hop was influenced by the conditions in which it grew, dictating how it absorbed the weather, expressed the land, and when it ripened. Several types of Goldings were available in the 19th century, often named for the parish in which they grew, like the Canterbury Golding (renamed from the Canterbury Whitebine), Petham Golding, Eastwell, and Bramling. Sometimes they were named after the grower, like Cobb’s, Mercer’s, and Amos’s Early Bird.
There were Golding hops grown elsewhere—in the Weald, mid Kent, the Midlands—but in East Kent they grew the most distinctively, and that led to them collectively being called “East Kent Goldings.” A point of clarification: There is no hop variety called East Kent Golding—there are merely Golding hops grown in East Kent—and today that label encompasses several varieties, including Cobb’s and Eastwells, plus some Early Birds. East Kent’s Golding hops are seen as so distinctive that they’ve been given a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, like Cornish clotted cream and Stilton cheese.
“Golding hops like drier weather and lighter chalk earth, which seems to give them their warmer and sweeter flavors, while Fuggle hops, grown just some 25-30 miles southwest, like the wet, cold Wealden clay which gives them a fresher, crisp bite to the hop. These hops together define British beer, but it’s the specific local growing conditions which define the hops.”
Golding was a premium hop, and it was reserved for the premium beers of the mid-to-late 19th century—the Pale Ales and India Pale Ales. The old-style, long-matured Porters, in which brewers could use inferior-quality hops, were of the past. Now the big brewers were demanding hops from specific farms in Kent. The growing preference for pale beer greatly benefitted Golding, and Kent’s hop farmers.
Hops were a profitable crop, and reached an all-time high of 71,789 acres planted in 1878 (double what the figure had been in 1800). Kent had 46,000 acres of hops, spread over 300 parishes, mostly on small farms, with the hop-drying oast houses now an iconic part of the county’s scenery. There were roughly three oasts to every pub, and more than 10 oasts per church.
It wasn’t until the 1870s that the Goldings of East Kent were joined by the Fuggles of the Weald of Kent.
Sometime in the 1850s, Sarah Moore of Horsmonden had spent the day picking hops, probably Goldings, at Old Hay, the farm belonging to her sister’s husband’s family. Back at home that night she leaned outside her back door to empty the crumbs from her hop-picking dinner basket. Among the crumbs were some hop seeds, which then grew in the flower garden next to the kitchen.
Noticing the quality of those hops, Mrs. Moore gave her nephew—Mr. Richard Fuggle—some cuttings, which he planted in the clay earth of his farm a few miles away in Brenchley.
On Oct. 21, 1871, “Fuggle’s Goldings” were advertised in a local newspaper: “The Hop is as forward as the Jones’ kind [of hop, a non-Golding type], very prolific, and ranks in price with the ordinary Golding, while it is much more hardy and less susceptible to blight.” (“Blight” here refers to aphid infestation or general leaf discoloration.)
Fuggle isn’t a Golding variety, but is related by either one or two generations, making Golding the parent or grandparent of Fuggle. Despite their genetic closeness, the two hops present very different characteristics, and much of that is because of the different land in which they prefer to grow, and how that affects the bitter alpha acids and the aromatic oils in the plant.
Golding hops like drier weather and lighter chalk earth, which seems to give them their warmer and sweeter flavors, while Fuggle hops, grown just some 25-30 miles southwest, like the wet, cold Wealden clay which gives them a fresher, crisp bite. These hops together define British beer, but it’s the specific local growing conditions which define the hops.
Their success comes from the fact that both Fuggle and Golding were dependable in the field and the brewhouse, and so both growers and brewers came to rely on them. Ultimately, they became the two most important British hops, often used together for their different yet complementary qualities.
But at the turn of the 20th century, the beer industry was changing. Where hops were once uniquely a product of a place, they became a product of a purpose.
As industrialization gave brewing a new scale, and as scientific advances further developed the understanding of beer, growers and brewers began to control rather than mitigate nature’s inconsistencies. Hops started to be bred deliberately, for specific priorities.
In 1906, a hop-breeding program was started at Wye College in East Kent. It was run by plant pathologist Prof. Ernest Salmon, whose initial focus was on developing hops with a greater “preservative value.”
“‘[British] brewers increasingly favored buying hops cheaper that were less good quality in terms of flavor and aroma but were better quality in terms of the stability of the beer.’”
“It was quickly determined that the flavor and aroma was down to the oils, but the preservative value was down to the resins,” says Dr. Peter Darby, hop breeder and now-retired director of Wye Hops, who took over the breeding program in 1981. “Hops with a higher resin content had a higher preservative value.”
Preservative value (that is, the ability to delay spoilage in beer) ultimately came down to the alpha-acid content of the hop, so Salmon sought to breed varieties with a higher percentage of these acids—like a chili farmer trying to breed a hotter pepper.
“[British] brewers increasingly favored buying hops cheaper that were less good quality in terms of flavor and aroma but were better quality in terms of the stability of the beer,” says Darby.
The cheaper hops were often imported from North America, where resin content was around 6% compared to the 4% of Kent hops, but derogatory descriptors like ‘catty,’ ‘rank,’ and ‘pungent’ tell us that British brewers didn’t particularly admire their flavor.
Salmon had to combine antimicrobial qualities (high alpha acid content), nice flavor (from the oils), and good agronomics (viable yields, disease resistance) in his new varieties. The aim was to replace the need for imported hops, stabilizing the long-term future of British hop growing.
The results would fundamentally change the future of beer.
In December 1916, Salmon was sent a cutting of a wild female hop from the town of Morden, in Canada’s Manitoba province. He planted it at Wye College, and while it didn’t grow especially well in the chalky ground there, it was healthy enough in 1918 to be open-pollinated: A wild male pollen, which was almost certainly a Golding-type, floated on the breeze to the receptive female Manitoba plant, and some magic happened. The seeds were collected, and seedling plants raised in 1919.
“The reproductive biology of hops is identical to people,” explains Darby. When a male and female hop reproduce, “Every single hop seed is a unique individual,” where “a daughter may resemble its mother, but will never be the same as its mother.”
Salmon raised thousands of seedlings which were part-cultured English, part-wild American. He analyzed them, testing for resins, aroma, and disease resistance, with more crosses made in the following years. Almost all of them were rejected, for numerous reasons, but by 1925 a few plants were showing promise.
Among those with the best potential, some had 8% alpha-acid content, meaning Salmon had managed to double the amount in a standard Kent hop. The results were better, even, than any North American hop at that time. “It was a magnificent feat,” says Darby.
In 1934—hop breeding takes a long time—Salmon’s first new hop variety was ready for commercial release, and was named Brewer’s Gold.
Brewer’s Gold was the world’s first hop to be intentionally bred to have an entirely new characteristic—high alpha, or high preservative value—and it became the foundation of the Wye Hops breeding program.
Soon, more hops followed.
Brewer’s Gold had a sister called Bullion. A seedling of Brewer’s Gold and a U.S. male hop was crossed with Canterbury Golding to produce Northern Brewer, which was the first hop to combine high resin content and a European aroma (Brewer’s Gold and Bullion were seen as ‘too American’ by some brewers).
One of Salmon’s successors, Dr. Ray Neve, crossed a daughter of Northern Brewer with a son of Eastwell Golding, and their progeny was Wye Target (whose cousin is Challenger), released in 1972. It was the first hop to ever consistently be over 10% alpha, meeting a new purpose for the brewers of that era: economic efficiency. High-alpha hops meant they could use fewer hops to produce the same level of overall bitterness.
Wye Target was also resistant to verticillium wilt, a devastating soil-based fungus which had wiped out thousands of acres of Fuggles in the previous five decades. It was found that Goldings have a hidden wilt-resistance gene which was activated when crossed with the wild American hop. “Switching on those genes has led to all wilt-resistant varieties,” says Darby.
By the middle of the 20th century, there were hop-breeding programs in other parts of the world, and because of the successes at Wye College—and the imperialistic nature of how hops had spread to other countries—English varieties had a pedigreed quality which meant they were used as the default breeding material.
The Golding descendants—Brewer’s Gold, Bullion, and Northern Brewer—would ultimately become responsible for all high-alpha breeding and wilt resistance, while Fuggle—the most-prized English hop mid-century—was the choice hop for aroma and resistance to other diseases.
Cluster was the first North American landrace hop, hybridized from a wild American hop and a European hop planted by settlers, in a story paralleling how we got Golding from a Flemish Red Bine. It was widely grown on the East Coast, but factors like Prohibition and downy mildew, a fungus-like pathogen, eventually combined to force hop growing to the West Coast, with much of it in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Moving Cluster didn’t change its susceptibility to mildew, so Oregon growers also planted mildew-resistant Fuggle. By the 1930s, Fuggle was one of four main American-grown varieties, often used in Lagers alongside imported European varieties like Saaz and Hallertau.
For decades, Cluster remained America’s premier hop; in 1970 it was 80% of the country’s entire acreage, with Fuggle, Brewer’s Gold, and Bullion making up much of the rest. But 1970 was a point of change in the American beer industry, because more than 15 years of hop breeding was coming to market.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has had a hop investigation program at Oregon State University (OSU) since the 1930s, with an initial focus on clearing downy mildew from the hop yards. By the 1950s, that had progressed to a breeding program.
“The breeding goal was to develop replacement varieties that had a similar brewing profile [to Fuggle and imported European hops] but were better-adapted to U.S. growing conditions,” says Dr. Shaun Townsend, a hop breeder at OSU.
“Desirable aroma hop genotypes are difficult to find or develop,” says Townsend, “so when one is found, hop breeders tend to incorporate those genes into their breeding populations.” English hops became “part of the genetic basis for the hop improvement effort here.”
In the early 1950s, a cross was made between a Russian female hop called Serebrianka and a male Fuggle seedling. A male seed from that plant was crossed with a female Fuggle, and in 1956 one of their progenies was open-pollinated by a wild U.S. male hop. Among the resulting progeny, one seedling was selected as a potential new variety owing to its similar resin content to Hallertau Mittelfrüh. But something wasn’t right.
“‘Desirable aroma hop genotypes are difficult to find or develop, so when one is found, hop breeders tend to incorporate those genes into their breeding populations.’”
The hop’s European-like alpha profile and its English genes didn’t correlate to its aroma, which was distinctly floral. The land of the Willamette Valley had given this hop a new identity—an accent and attitude of its terroir—but it wasn’t an accent that the Lager-dominated beer industry was ready for, so it was picked and baled and left behind for a decade. It wasn’t until the late 1960s, when verticillium wilt devastated yields of Hallertau Mittelfrüh in Germany, that American brewers started considering this new hop.
Finally, in 1972, it was officially released as the first new variety through OSU’s USDA breeding program. The child and grandchild of Fuggle—making it at least 3/8 Fuggle—was given the name Cascade.
Meanwhile, a Fuggle replacement was a directive of one of its biggest buyers: Anheuser-Busch.
Fuggle liked the wet, Weald-like conditions in Oregon, but never produced great yields, as its delicate flowers and rootstock were easily damaged by the picking machines. Originally grown when all hops were hand-picked, it didn’t adapt well to the more aggressive mechanized technology (it remains a fragile hop to pick today).
The new hop needed to have a gentle European aroma, around 5% alpha acid content, good agronomics, and an economical yield. Fuggle had only the first two. As well as being easily damaged, it held a lot of seeds, which further affected its yield.
In 1967, Dr. Al Haunold, the USDA hop breeder at OSU, came up with a solution.
Regular hops contain 20 chromosomes—they’re “diploid.” By using an established plant-breeding technique, he doubled the chromosomes to 40, creating a “tetraploid.” He then crossed the diploid with the tetraploid to get a triploid, with 30 chromosomes. The result is a hop that’ll be virtually seedless while also being larger than the standard hop and having more alpha acids.
Haunold’s triploid was “a genetically supercharged Fuggle,” says Darby, and it had favorable alphas, aromas, and agronomics. The new variety was officially released in 1976 as Willamette.
Willamette replaced Fuggle stateside, and rapidly grew in acreage. By the end of the 1990s it was the primary American-grown aroma hop, ahead of Cascade, with U.S. Tettnang also in the top five. (U.S. Tettnang was misnamed, and is not a Tettnang at all—it’s a Fuggle clone.)
“Mr. Golding and Mr. Fuggle were hop growers,” says Darby. “They selected their varieties because they were good growing hops and that seems to be a characteristic inherited by many of their progeny.” And there have been a lot of descendants of Fuggle, plus Golding and Salmon’s high-alpha varieties.
These new hops aren’t where Golding and Fuggle’s legacy ends. In 1974, a Petham Golding was crossed with a seed of Brewer’s Gold and a wild Utah male hop to create Chinook, released in 1985.
Centennial, meanwhile, has Brewer’s Gold and Fuggle on its maternal side, and a combination of Brewer’s Gold, Golding, and a Bavarian hop on the paternal side.
The same father plant as Centennial gave us Nugget, whose mother plant also included Brewer’s Gold. Nugget was one of the first very high-alpha hops, regularly reaching over 12% (and designated as a hop to be used for alpha-acid extraction, as an example of the next development of large brewing’s ongoing strive for efficiency).
Galena, another very high alpha hop (11.5-13.5%), and once the most-grown U.S. varietal, has Brewer’s Gold as its mother.
Citra is now America’s most-grown hop variety. It is the great-granddaughter of Fuggle (or U.S. Tettnang, which is Fuggle), with Brewer’s Gold and Golding (and a Bavarian hop and a wild U.S. hop) also in its heritage.
Mosaic is the daughter of Nugget and Simcoe, so that’s got Golding in it, making Citra and Mosaic the Fuggle and Golding of Hazy IPA, and more than just metaphorically. (Simcoe is a proprietary hop developed by Yakima Chief Ranches, which has not revealed its parentage.)
In New Zealand, “all of our material has English heritage,” says Dr. Ron Beatson, principal scientist of hop breeding & genetics at New Zealand’s institute of Plant and Food Research.
“This isn’t just a roll call of popular hops: Three-quarters of the current global annual hop crop is derived from Fuggle, Golding, or one of Salmon’s breeds (the other quarter descend from traditional landrace varieties like Saaz, Hallertau, Tettnang, Strisselspalt, and Cluster).”
Hops are not indigenous to New Zealand, but were introduced by British and German settlers in the 1840s. American Late Cluster hops came to replace the European varieties as they were better suited to the growing conditions, but Late Cluster was susceptible to black root rot (to which the European hops were resistant), and the problem became so great that in the 1930s a domestic breeding program was founded.
Late Cluster and Fuggle became “the backbone of our genetics and our breeding program,” says Beatson. The first cultivars—Smooth Cone, First Choice, and Calicross, released in the 1960s—had European alphas, good yields, and were disease-resistant (“all the signs point towards Fuggle as the resistant source,” says Beatson). All future New Zealand hops were bred from those varieties.
In the mid-1980s, Beatson used Smooth Cone in the breeding of the hop which became Nelson Sauvin. It’s now New Zealand’s most-grown hop, a member of the second generation of Kiwi hops, alongside Green Bullet, Pacific Gem, and Southern Cross. They are all the grandchildren of Fuggle, bred with good genes and given personality by their land.
Elsewhere: Styrian Golding is actually Fuggle. Perle, the second-most-grown German hop, was bred from Northern Brewer, while German Magnum was bred from Galena. Hallertau Blanc, Mandarina Bavaria, and Huell Melon are sisters bred from Cascade. Australian Galaxy was bred from Perle, while Vic Secret and Topaz are the daughters of an unnamed Wye College hop.
This isn’t just a roll call of popular hops: Three-quarters of the current global annual hop crop is derived from Fuggle, Golding, or one of Salmon’s breeds (the other quarter descend from traditional landrace varieties like Saaz, Hallertau, Tettnang, Strisselspalt, and Cluster).
Back in Kent, most of those old oast houses have been converted into expensive homes. Where once there were thousands of growers, there are now fewer than 60 in the whole of England. Where once Kent had 46,000 acres of hops, there’s now little more than 1,000 acres. East Kent Goldings grow on only 240 acres (with another 320 acres of Goldings grown outside of East Kent). Fuggles have 220 acres split between Kent and the Midlands. And if you quadrupled England’s entire hop acreage, it’d be similar to the land needed for just Citra in North America.
Fuggle and Golding aren’t disappearing yet—they’re too integral to too many beers—but these traditional landrace English varieties could use some more attention. They make the most wonderful Bitters and Pale Ales, and other elegant and engaging beers. They’re complex and full of character, and they are the progenitors of most modern hops. We should appreciate the classic varieties while we still can.
“The importance of Goldings and Fuggles to breeding programs around the world, to the varieties that are used by brewers, really can’t be overstated,” says Darby. “We wouldn’t have the varieties and the flavors that people now expect if it hadn’t been for Mr. Golding and Mr. Fuggle.”
Klara Hajdu is studying for her PhD in hop breeding while simultaneously training to take over from Peter Darby as the breeder at Wye Hops. Her research is looking into the hop genotype to find the genetic markers which are responsible for certain traits, like resistance to wilt and downy mildew.
Once she finds these markers, every new hop seedling can be genetically analyzed, keeping only those with the requisite markers, and ultimately enabling more precision in hop breeding, which will “increase the accumulation of the good things, as you can put them back into the breeding circulation,” says Hajdu.
“The goal is to establish a good platform for using these advanced molecular techniques,” she says. “I’m developing my methods through finding wilt markers but I’m actually developing methods to be able to mass-screen future breeding program materials and find markers for anything.”
“‘The importance of Goldings and Fuggles to breeding programs around the world, to the varieties that are used by brewers, really can’t be overstated. We wouldn’t have the varieties and the flavors that people now expect if it hadn’t been for Mr. Golding and Mr. Fuggle.’”
While this genetic screening is the future of breeding, the actual breeding itself is still done just the way Ernest Salmon did it over 100 years ago, and Fuggle and Golding—and the many generations of hops which hold their DNA—are still fundamental to the program. What’s new is the purpose, and today that means impact and flavor.
One day, genetic markers might answer the question: “Will it grow well?” but it will still be much harder to answer the question “What aromas and flavors will it have?” Those markers come from multiple interacting genes, and the acids and oils in a given hop variety are so closely influenced by where it’s grown, by the sunshine and showers, the chalk or the clay.
In the coming years, we will understand new things about the genetic composition of hops. But their personality will always be more beautifully elusive than that, created by the land from which they grew.
Words by Mark DredgeIllustrations by Colette Holston
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