Book Review

Title: The Hop Atlas. The History and Geography of the Cultivated Plant.

Author: By Heirich Joh. Barth, Christian Klinke, and Claus Schmidt.

Published by Joh. Barth & Sohn, Nuremberg, Germany. 1994

Cost: $110 with the AHA.

Pretty much all you ever wanted to know about hops in a neat little package and filled with illustrations. Published by Joh Barth and Sohn, a major hop producer in Germany to mark their bicentennial in 1994 and intended as a standard reference to the hop industry. The book is more a kin to the Michael Jackson book on beers of the world in its format than a text book.

Highlights:

Everything you wanted to know about how hops are packaged and processed. The use computer illustrations to show how the hop goes from the vine to whole hops, extracts, pellets, etc.

Many illustrations. They have old maps of Europe from 1875 that show the hop growing regions in relationship of the hops exported. Old etchings of the Nuremberg Hop market. Hop seals of the Hallertau area. Pictures of all the hop varieties in both the cones and leaves. On average, there’s about 3 pictures per page.

Statistics, tables and graphs. All sorts of information about beer production, hop production, alpha acid production, production costs, climate temperature averages,… If its related to hop production, its on a graph or table

History. All about when, where and why hops are produced or not produced in certain areas. Where the different varieties came from. What stopped production of a particular line whether from political reasons (prohibition, WW2, …), from pests, or something else. Much can be gleaned from reading the history as to why hops are the way they are and where production is headed.

 

Very enjoyable read. Nice cocktail table book for the brew geek in all of us.

Notes:

Nice binding. Its rare to see this kind of binding on a commercial book. Its the same binding as on professional reference books.

The German region is better documented than the other regions. There are also some editting problems probably due to translation. For example, in the California section, San Helena instead on St. Helena, Hop City instead of Hopland, and Juba county instead of Yuba county. (all on page 154)

Organization of book:

pages: 383

Rough Table of Contents

Forward.

Introduction.

Hops- Growing Countries operating on World Markets

Germany

Hop growing in Germany today

Hallertau
Jura
Elbe-Saale
Tettnang
Spalt
Hersbruck
Other areas

USA

Former Hop Producing States

New England
New York
Wisconsin
California

Hop Varieties Grown in USA today

Traditional Varieties
Aroma Varieties
High Alpha varieties

 

Present Hop Growing regions

Oregon
Washington
Idaho
China
Russian and Ukranian Republics
Czech and Slovak Republics
England
Slovenia
Poland
Australia
France
Belgium

 

Countries where hops are grown mainly for the domestic market
Countries with Insignificant Hop production or experimentation