Oast house

The purpose of an oast is to dry hops. This is achieved by the use of a flow of heated air through the kiln, rather than a firing process. Hops were picked in the hop gardens by gangs of pickers, who worked on a piece work basis and earned a fixed rate per bushel. The green hops were put into large hessian sacks called pokes. These would be taken to the oast and brought into the stowage at first floor level. Some oasts had a man-powered hoist for this purpose, consisting of a pulley of some 5 feet (1.52 m) diameter on an axle to which a rope or chain was attached. The green hops when freshly picked had a moisture content of some 80%; this needed to be reduced to 6%, although the moisture content would subsequently rise to 10% during storage.