W.E. & J. Rigden hops in 1884/85

Finally, it’s the turn of hops.

Quite a lot of different ones, all of them English. Which, I suppose, isn’t that odd for a brewery located in Kent. Though none are specifically identified as being from that county. I suspect that the ones only identified by the name of the grower (English in the table).

Most striking is the presence of some spent hops in every single beer. They were really squeezing every last bit of goodness from them. I’ve come across brewers throwing spent hops into their cheap beers, but never into every single one in their range.

All the hops were pretty fresh, with nothing older than a year or two. That might be on account of them all being English. Which were mostly used without much age. Unlike American hops, which were often used when three or more years old.

As was standard, all the beers contained at least two types of hops. 

W.E. & J. Rigden hops in 1884/85
Beer	Style	hop 1	hop 2	hop 3	hop 4	hop 5
Beer	Mild	Sussex 1884	English 1883	English 1883	spent
AK	Pale Ale	Sussex 1884	English 1884	English 1884	English 1883	spent
AK Stock	Pale Ale	Worcs. 1884	English 1883	spent
Special Ale	Pale Ale	Sussex 1884	English 1884	spent
XXK	Pale Ale	Sussex 1884	Farnham 1884	English 1884	spent
TA	Table Ale	Sussex 1884	English 1884	English 1884	English 1883	spent
XXX	Stock Ale	Farnham 1884	English 1884	spent
P	Porter	English 1883	English 1883	spent
DS	Stout	English 1883	English 1883	spent
Source:
Fremlin brewing record held at the Kent Archives, document number U3555/2/GBR/BX2/1/9.