Important Beer News
Jan. 10th, 2008 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feste_sylvainThe world is facing an imminent hop shortage. Hops are a weird-ass weed with cone-like green "flowers" which are used as both a bittering agent in beer and a preservative. While the majority of beer nowadays uses some hops, a few resurgent styles (most notably "India Pale Ale", or "IPA" for short) use a lot of them.
The real problem, IMHO, is the unobtainability of many non-standard varieties in the coming shortage. As any good farmer, or anyone involved with the "local produce" movement knows, it's important to keep a wide variety of strains of any given crop out there. With a few natural (or economic) disasters hitting the growers of some less-common varieties, we may see some homogenization of the kinds of hops available in the future, which would be a Bad Thing.
But as far as beer goes, I'm actually hopeful. Many of my friends who don't like beer actually don't like hops. Historically, they are not alone in this: King Henry VIII went so far as to ban the use of hops in beer in England during his reign. But hops are not required in beer. As I said at the start, they are a bittering agent and a preservative. I once made a batch of beer using ginger and cardamom, which aren't bittering at all, and were less of a preservative, but the batch was so popular that I didn't have to worry about shelf-life past the ingredients' abilities to preserve.
Most dark beers use less hops anyway, and many brewers may well come up with recipes which use no hops at all.
So much good may come out of this.
[EDIT:] Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
missionista's comment, I found the Gruit Ale website. I've only had time to skim so far, but it appears to be a resource I'll be using later.
The real problem, IMHO, is the unobtainability of many non-standard varieties in the coming shortage. As any good farmer, or anyone involved with the "local produce" movement knows, it's important to keep a wide variety of strains of any given crop out there. With a few natural (or economic) disasters hitting the growers of some less-common varieties, we may see some homogenization of the kinds of hops available in the future, which would be a Bad Thing.
But as far as beer goes, I'm actually hopeful. Many of my friends who don't like beer actually don't like hops. Historically, they are not alone in this: King Henry VIII went so far as to ban the use of hops in beer in England during his reign. But hops are not required in beer. As I said at the start, they are a bittering agent and a preservative. I once made a batch of beer using ginger and cardamom, which aren't bittering at all, and were less of a preservative, but the batch was so popular that I didn't have to worry about shelf-life past the ingredients' abilities to preserve.
Most dark beers use less hops anyway, and many brewers may well come up with recipes which use no hops at all.
So much good may come out of this.
[EDIT:] Thanks to
missionista's comment, I found the Gruit Ale website. I've only had time to skim so far, but it appears to be a resource I'll be using later.
