An oast (oast house) is a building designed for drying (kilning) hops as part of the brewing process.
It consists of two discrete parts – kiln (drying) & stowage (cooling & bagging).
Kilns are generally round or square shaped, although other exotic shapes are seen e.g. octagonal.
The earliest were square as an easy shape to build, but suffered from ‘cold spots’ in the corners.
So they constructed the more difficult & expensive to build circular shape (roundals).
Finally went back to square-shaped & overcame ‘cold spots’ by introducing fans in the base of the walls to circulate the warm air.
The characteristic usually white cowls are essentially roof vents which turn with the wind direction and often have a decorative figure on the vane (arm).
The green (wet) hops were spread out on the elevated kiln drying floor, which consisted of thin wooden battens covered with a horsehair cloth.
Warm air from a wood or charcoal-burning fire below percolated up through the hops and the reek (damp air) escaped up through the cowl.
When dry, the hops were removed from the kiln using a scuppet (special shovel) spread out on the stowage floor to cool, and would then be pressed into large jute sacks called pockets using a hop press and then sent off to market.
Many redundant oasts have been converted into residential properties, but luckily this quintessential Kentish oast has not yet been converted and is a fine example of a traditional square kiln.
The co-ordinates above are for the question stage and not the location of the cache.
To find the cache containing only a log book, please bring your own writing implement, you will have to find the answers to the following :-
At N51.08.677 E000.34.941 you will find the information to the questions below.
Danger of Death = ABCDEF
Cobra = GHJK
(Co-ordinates for Kent Oast Houses #36)
N51.08. (D – (F/C)) (C+E) (B – E) E000.34. (J + G + K) (H) (G – K)
This is a series of caches conceived by Charlton11 and Lucyflight placed near some fine examples of Kent oast houses.