After several excursions to faraway lands I thought the time was ripe to return to matters closer to home, and the topic of this blog post is therefore a lovely plant that to a greater or lesser extent is present in every serious beer in production today. You can’t smoke it, you can’t eat it, you can’t make love to it, but you definitely can drink it. I’m talking about one of the key ingredients in beer, in fact one of the four allowed under the German purity law from 1516. Known as Humulus Lupulus in Latin and as Humle in the other world language (Norwegian), in English it ain’t skips, it ain’t jumps, but it sure is hops.
To most people, the humble hop is something that’s known to be present in beer, but isn’t really a great concern when beer is being purchased. Whereas the sugar or fat content of most foodstuffs is almost always listed in considerable detail on the label, most drinkers don’t know, or don’t care, what particular hops go into their favourite brew, or in what amounts. The fact that the vast majority of breweries can’t be bothered to print this basic information on the label clearly does not help. In fact, quite a few of the world’s biggest brewers would rather keep this information secret, partly to protect their ancient recipes, but mostly to avoid having to reveal how little they actually bother to add. This is just plain wrong, and has to change right now. I suggest that you all write to your local Member of Parliament, Senator, Governor or Dictator and ask him or her to change the consumer laws immediately. Whilst we wait for this long-overdue change, I will supply you with some mildly interesting facts.
Hops are the spices of beer. Whereas malt provides the body,
hops add that little extra that makes all the difference. First and foremost,
the refreshing bitterness in the beer comes from the hops, and the general rule
is that the more the brewer adds, the bitterer the beer will be. Additionally,
this wonderful plant increases the beer’s microbiological stability – in other
words, acts as a preservative – and stabilizes the foam to boot. However, the
story does not end there. There are a huge number of different varieties that
impart subtly different spicy flavours in the beer, and many skilful brewers use a combination of hops to arrive at the desired taste profile of the
finished product, much in the same way a master chef blends herbs and spices to
perfect a recipe.
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| No prizes for guessing what this plant's called in Norwegian |
Hops are grown in many temperate climates around the world,
and some of the most famous hop varieties are named after the region from which
they originate: Zatec (also known by its German name Saaz), Hallertau and Tettnang
are some of the best known. The fact that the biggest hop growing regions are found in the south of Germany is evident whenever you watch a big sporting event, such as downhill skiing, from this region. Whenever the athlete passes by, the audience will start to scream "hop hop hop", which is a direct encouragement for the athlete to go faster since the top prize is typically a half litre of the hoppiest local beer. Well, that's what I like to think, anyway.
In the last few years, decades of research and development
has gone into creating new hop varieties, resulting in lots of new ones – many
from the New World – where unusual flavour components dominate, resulting in
exciting tastes such as pineapple, citrus, black pepper and aniseed, to name
but a few. Together, all of these varieties can be used by adventurous brewers
to create crazy concoctions that taste very unlike the standard stuff you knew
you had to learn to like when you were a spotty teenager.
With such an array of incredible tastes available to the brewers
of the world, it may come as a surprise to you that the vast majority of the
beer on the shelves in shops and bars contains very little. There is actually a
measurement scale for the bitterness of beer, known as the International
Bitterness Units (IBUs). A bland, international mass market lager typically has
only 5-10 IBUs, whereas a good pilsner from a worthwhile brewery typically has
around 30. Pale ales are higher still, and then we have the IPAs and
double-IPAs where the IBU scale is being pushed towards the 100 mark. Some of
the most extreme variants should be treated with care, as you’re unlikely to
taste anything else for the next couple of weeks after finishing the bottle.
Now why am I suddenly writing about this topic? Well, the
reason is that my local supermarket has started stocking a new beer, and it may
not surprise you to hear that it’s a tasty, bitter one. What may surprise you
is that this beer comes from one of the biggest breweries in Germany, and what
may actually shock you is that, for once, I am going to write something
positive about a big brand. The brewery is Warsteiner, and the beer is simply
called “Herb” – which is actually German for bitter, dry or tart. It seems that
what’s happened is that someone high up in the brewery’s hierarchy decided that
the general public is getting a little bit tired with the same anonymous
pilsners all the time. The standard Warsteiner is drinkable enough – if it
wasn’t, they’d have to export it all – but tastes more or less the same as the
other 6 or 7 major brands in Germany. The solution was astonishingly simple:
double the amount of hops, change the colour of the label to green and attach
the “Herb” brand, and hey presto – we have hop-off. Having tried not one, but eleven whole bottles of this stuff I can attest to the fact that it’s a vast
improvement, and I hope that other brewers will take notice and follow suit.
This turned out to be quite a lecture! You now know more
about hops than you ever knew was worth knowing, presumably because you
mistakenly believed that beer was a simple drink. Well, we can all be wrong
from time to time (though I’m not sure I’m right about that), so you can do a
couple of things to make amends. For example, the next time you’re in a bar or
a pub, ask the barman where the different beers are on the IBU scale. Then ask
him what particular hops go into the different brews. There’s little point
asking a third question since you will have been thrown out by now, but you
have made a start: slowly but surely the hop-ignorant masses will learn, absorb
and start to care, at which point the world will truly be a much hoppier place.
Now go and have a beer. Cheers!
