Incredibly petty rant corner: the supposed antibacterial effect of hop

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TimT

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I've been herbal brewing for a few years - brewing a number of brews entirely without hops, concentrating mainly on historical brewing herbs like the Artemisias, Sage, alehoof, yarrow, etc etc etc. And giving my own brews out for tastings - and tasting other people's brews - I've come across comments of this sort:

Gee, without the hops bacteria's really had a souring effect, hasn't it?

You get it with comments about other people's brews, too - not just my own admittedly odd brews.

It's probably one of the main things that has stopped folks from brewing according to these historical, unhopped styles more often - and it's always attributed to the antibacterial effect of hops in standard brews.

But the more I think about it, the less sense this makes. I can think of about five or six separate arguments against the souring occurring due to the antibacterial effect of hops, and really only one argument in favour. Let me count the ways, good people!

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR
- Hops do have an antibacterial effect. It's true, and it's been repeated too often enough with citations to studies for me to doubt it.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST
- Other herbs, including traditional brewing herbs, have antibacterial effects too. Wormwood and Mugwort (the Artemisias) in particular. Pennyroyal, too, and possibly some of the other mints. Honey, the oldest brewing ingredient of all, definitely has some antibacterial qualities. But brews that include these ingredients and not hops will typically become sour anyway.

- Yeast will naturally acidify its environment, which I presume is one of its natural defences against other microorganisms. The natural pH range of beers is around 3.9 - 4.5. (By comparison, orange juice (with all that citric acid) pH ranges from around 3.3 - 4.19. Apple juice pH is similar.)

- Traditionally many beers were either drunk while incredibly young (a day after the start of fermentation, when a lot of residual sweetness was left over) or while incredibly old (when it had had time to age and mellow). Perhaps the standard rule that beers should be drunk within a few weeks of fermentation should be modified for herbal brews and gruits.

- The acidity of brews will intensify with the type of malts you add; ie, it seems to be partially malt driven. Dark malts make the brew more acidic, with herbal dark beers often being undrinkable.

- My brews are frequently sour-acidic but I don't see any other signs of a bacterial fermentation, ie, no pellicle or carbonation from lactic fermentation.

- It's not just me; other brewers - including commercial brewers - report a similar sort of acidity for their brews. I had a lovely dark lager that contained anise and fennel from Temple the other week, and I asked them if they encountered tartness with the brew at first. They said they had; the brew had been aged for a number of months, and was, they said, at first, "almost undrinkable". It strikes me as unlikely that they'd have similar sort of problems with lacto-bacilli as I do in my dodgy brewery... :p

- Hops are a masking ingredient, and a very good one. I think this is a key point, and one that is very often ignored. Hops are very effective at hiding unwanted flavours, or altering the whole quality of a brew and dominating the taste profile. Their history in English brewing at least seem to back this up; they were brought to UK brewing by the Dutch, who were also noted for importing other strong spices like ginger and nutmeg to the UK as well. It is hardly a surprise that the highest-hopped of traditional English brews, the IPA, was also the brew that had to be transported the furthest: the hops arguably not only acted as a preservative, but their bitterness helped to keep unsavoury flavours hidden. (Another food that the English got from the India is the curry, and again this is associated with the use of masking ingredients: curry spices masked old or rancid meat). Some other traditional brewing herbs appear to have similar masking effects: wormwood, horehound, gentian, vanilla.

In short you're all wrong and I don't care I'm going to my room nyah nyah.

(Comments and rebuttals and vociferous agreements or disagreements welcome).
 
Ron Pattinson might disagree with your assessment of ipa as the 'highest hopped'.

Beyond that - brew using whatever ingredients you like. People make misinformed comments about loads of things.

I'd suggest dismissing hops as purely 'masking off flavours' is one. I use hops for all beers but the amount varies massively. My lower hopped beers are generally preferable fresh but that isn't an exclusive or linear relationship.
 
Tim you missed the one argument that really counts
Beer made with hops tastes better!

At some point there were no hops used in brewing, once they were discovered they supplanted all the alternatives, in some cases in spite of opposition from church and state (economic vested interest). The same can be said for barley, once people used what ever starch source they could find, when barley became available it was the product of choice (for a bunch of reasons) but mostly because beer made from barley tastes better.

The idea that we are all wrong reminds me of the story of a proud mother watching her sons passing out parade and exclaiming "look the whole class is out of step - except my Johnny"
Tim I have a great interest in brewing history, and have over the years made and tasted many Meads and Gruit beers. I have never tasted a Gruit that is the anywhere near the equal of even pretty ordinary hopped beer.
If you really think this is not true, send me a rebuttal in a bottle (I'll even pay the postage), I would be happy to be proved wrong, but doubt you are a good enough brewer when compared to some of the other hop free beers I have tried.
Mark
 
I wouldn't say hops are *only* for masking off flavours - definitely not. I would say this effect is generally ignored or overlooked these days.

Mark, I'll keep working on the ol' herbal brews. I've had some successes and some noted failures and many in-betweens. If I get a brilliant brew I'd love to send a bottle through. I value your opinion about the relative taste of hopped beers to non-hopped beers highly as I'm sure you've tasted many beers of all sorts; I do look with more suspicion upon the opinions by first-time gruit drinkers who will say "I just don't like it" or "needs hops to stop the lacto-bacilli, it's too sour", since a) beer is something of an acquired taste anyway and the same is true for medieval beer styles, and b.) they're often being informed by the modern prejudice that a brew has to have hops to knock back the lacto-bacilli/taste good.

What do you make of ginger beer and drinks like that (also ginger ale, sarsaparilla, and the odd dandelion and burdock ale that you find here and there)? These are drinks that are still being sold now; they have long brewing traditions; they are based around one or two strong spices (not hops), and they probably all evolved out of earlier alcoholic drinks. Evidence of the survival of some traditions of herbal brewing in the modern age? Or can we simply dismiss them as an anomaly because they're not beer? At the very least they would seem to be able to inform modern brewing practice as to how these spices (ginger, sarsaparilla, dandelion, burdock) could work in a finished brew.
 
gruit, hops or whatever are primarily to balance the sweetness from the malt, not to hide off flavours.

Make an unbittered beer, just malt water and yeast, no hops, gruit or other bittering agents. It's shouldn't be sour (unless you're unsanitary, deliberately or otherwise), just disgustingly sweet and unbalanced. I claim it was an experiment and a worthwhile use of time and grains, rather than a stupid brew day stuff up that saw the hops left on the kitchen bench. It was tipped after about 3 months in the keg.

As Mark said, hops just do a better job in beer than other herbs.
 
Actually I started making mead before I started brewing beer, I'm a big fan of a good ginger beer (tho its a long way between good alcoholic GB's), Huge fan of Sarsaparilla, Liquorice (from the root) even played around with Spruce and Birch. Some of the American root beers are very interesting - even the soft drink versions and some of the brewed ones when you can get them.

In and of themselves all the ingredients mentioned can by used to make excellent beverages, it's just that one of them has to be the best for making beer, and I think its Hops!

I have even tasted some archeologic beers, recipes worked out by examining our ancestors' garbage, Beer bittered with bracken fern stems...
Like I said, I'm interested in the history of beer, show me a beer that tastes better and I'll brew it, but based on everything I have encountered, we can drink the best beer in human history - or choose not to as we please.
Mark
 
I have daydreams of diving an ancient shipwreck and discovering a hold full of old Viking beer or something. Sending a bottle off to whitelabs so they can propagate the yeast :)
...One day..
 
Better still Benn digging into a Viking Brewers Barrow and finding his wort stirring stick, still with dormant yeast cells stuck to it, though I am not convinced that the ale they drunk would have been very palatable, though I would like to think it hit the right spots.

I would be even happier having a few tankards of the original IPA that went over to India, bet it wasn't anything like the overly hopped AIPA, I would like to think that the malt flavours would come through.
 
I would be even happier having a few tankards of the original IPA that went over to India, bet it wasn't anything like the overly hopped AIPA, I would like to think that the malt flavours would come through.

Probably full of the Brett and bacterial funk too, given it spent many long moths, at many different temps, in barrels at sea.

And - if it was an original brew - and given that hop flavours fade anyway - it'd probably taste very malty by this time!

But that's the whole thing with historical brewing: it's difficult and often impossible to recreate with full accuracy a historical style. A better aim is to produce a brew that is informed and influenced by historical knowledge.
 
(Bracken fern beer - what'd it taste like Mark?)
 
Like everything else then? Yeah I knew about the carcinogen connection.
 
TimT said:
(Bracken fern beer - what'd it taste like Mark?)
A not too exciting slightly over sweet smoked brown ale, with a funny aftertaste - wouldn't spend a lot of money on a second one - sort of my whole point beer has improved.

The oldest live yeast I have ever heard of came from bottles in a shipwreck in the English Channel Cr 1700-1705, apparently the beer from it is in the British national yeast archive if you want to spend around 400 pounds they will supply a slant, from all reports its not all that good, modern yeast is better.
Mark
 
I didn't know about birch beer! I just googled that and got some very interesting hits. Spruce beer I rate quite highly, also fir beer - in either case the conifery taste really seems to smooth over the acidity of the brew, and the aroma (especially with fir beer) can be quite pleasant. I'd love to make birch sap wine sometime, though the sap is hard to get in Australia - you can't tap birches here like you can in other countries; it's just not a happy environment for birch over here.
 
Sounds delicious!

Especially the 'moths' part. Damn my spelling! I'd do something to change it if I wasn't so amused at the results.
 
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