@agoodbeerblog On a boat abandoned at Graveney, Kent (in south-eastern England) at some time in the tenth century AD a cargo of hundreds of hop flowers was found. This is a probable indication that by this
time hops for use in beer brewing were being traded. Certainly the common use of hops in beer would not come for a few more centuries, but its use was probably fairly widespread already by the end of the first millennium.
citation to follow:
@agoodbeerblog
Nelson, M. The Barbarian’s Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe. Taylor & Francis, 2004, endnote 71, referring to the passage on pp 112:
Wilson 1975: esp. 633–634, Fenwick 1978a: 171–172 (with figure 6.5 at
174), Wilson and Conolly 1978: 138 and 147–148 (with fig. 5.1.1 at 134–135),
and Behre 1999: 40.
@agoodbeerblog Previously in Nelson 2004 pp 108:
... the rules for the abbey of
Fontanella (a monastery located near the mouth of the Seine River which was founded by St Wandrille around AD 645), made a list of the various tithes supplied to the monastery which includes a reference to ‘as much as is required for necessities’ of sicera <ex> humolone, certainly here ‘beer made with hops’.
So it's reasonable to think that the Graveney Boat may have had hops from the Benedictines of Normandy