Hop Kilns Riwaka

Around Riwaka look out for the hop kilns, now superseded but a feature of this and other parts of the Nelson Region.

The unique climatic conditions around Nelson allow a range of unusual crops to be grown. Within a year or two of the first New Zealand Company settlers arriving, in the early 1840s, hops were being grown in sheltered backyards and valleys on tripods of manuka poles. Home brew was in high demand at the time and Nelson commercial and boutique brewers have since become well recognised throughout the country. The area’s clear, cool winters and hot summers provided ideal conditions for hop-growing and a number of commercial hop gardens were devel- oped over the following decades. Today some of these ventures rival the size of more recently established apple and kiwifruit orchards. But unlike other horticultural crops, hops - and tobacco, which also grows very well in the region - need to be dried before use. Many of the early hop kilns survive today, retiring quietly in farmyards and beside the unusual Bavarian-style homesteads of Nelson’s hinterland. Traditionally these kilns were 16 feet (or five metres) square and stood five metres to the eaves, usually adjoining another shed of similar design. The kilns were topped with a distinctive, vented, cupola-style roof that helped to create the warm draft needed to dry the hops. A furnace room on the ground floor, usually fed by a coke or oil-fired furnace, was fired up 24 hours a day during the drying season. Green hops were spread out on the upper floor to dry in the constant warm updraft and the farmer slept in the kiln during this time to watch over the hops and ensure that they were dried to perfection. Numerous hop kilns still stand, although they have long since been superseded by modern coal-fired kilns more suited to larger production. They can be seen as you drive through Riwaka and the Motueka Valley, throughout Upper and Lower Moutere, near Wakefield and in the Tapawera area. Most have retained a rustic charm and quaint beauty not often seen in New Zealand.

© Sue Farley 2006