I don’t have an answer, but I like the sound of names such as The Grape Hop and Canterbury Jacks.
They were part of the English hop landscape more than 100 years ago, and a curious soul might wonder what beers brewed with them would smell and taste like.
Would they offer “new flavors” or old ones? Would they stir up the same excitement Simcoe, Citra and Sorachi Ace do today simply because they are different?* Probably not, to be honest, because they were mostly variations on a theme. The new generation of hops have been bred from a wider range of ancestors.
*(Quick aside, Sorachi Ace is a great name, but I can’t visualize is growing alongside Golding in the hop gardens of Kent.)
Idle thoughts, really, while reading “English Hops: A History of Cultivation and Preparation for the Market from the Earliest Times.” Some other hop names from the 1919 book: Golden Tips, Pretty Wills’, Cobb’s Hop, Amos’s Early Bird and Old Jones’s Hop.
Old Jones’s Hop was “well-shaped, of good colour, of medium size, and of good flavour. The bine is short and green. it was cultivated under the name of Jones’s hop as early as 1798, but is now little grown, as it bears only a small crop.”
Even then the lesson was plain for a hop plant: Produce or be gone.
Personally, I think Sorachi Ace is a terrible name. It evokes nothing. Your 19th century hop names look a lot like names of apple trees which, as agricultural products, make sense. Sorachi Ace? Came seventh in the fifth race at Belmont.
“It evokes nothing.”
Maybe a Ki-43 Oscar pilot? 😉
It seems that some hop developers paid homage to the regions where the hop originated with appropriate names. Other hop developers named plants after themselves or used “cute” names for the advertising value.
Naming the plant is the marketing, growing the plant is the reality.
What name would you give a hop plant that you’ve developed?
How would a hop with a name like,,,say,,,”Big Johnson”,, affect beer marketing? A good name,,or a bad name? What if it’s a ripping dwarf with fantastic flavors?
I forgot to ask.
Has there ever been a hop with a feminine name?
After all,,,all hops come from a female plant. 😉
Todd
Is Galena the female of Galen?
olllllo,
I don’t know. I thought Galena relates to lead,,,and who would want that in beer?
The Canterbury Jacks and the Apple Puddings sound like inter-mural Ivy League debate team names.
Perhaps just coincidental, but the Schlitz Milwaukee brewery and corporate headquarter address was 235 W. Galena Street- which predated the release of the namesake hop strain.
Even stranger, the first usage of the hop that I recall on a beer label was on The Lion’s Stegmaier Golden Nuggets (a short-lived “super-premium” that came in 7 oz. bottles- thus the name).