Color blind brewer asks, "Why doesn't hops make beer green?"

First, for clarification purposes, color blindness is usually not like seeing in black and white. I see color, just not correctly. They should call it color confusion.

Green is a challenge for me anyway. It may look tan or red.

That said, the hops look pretty green to me, and when I put the hops into the wort the whole thing looks very green at first. But, by some magic the beer itself never looks green.

Why is that?

I guess chlorophyll, what makes plants green, does not break down out of vegetable matter very easily. That would explain why soups often have celery, bay leaves and the like and are similarly not green.

I have brewed some lighter colored beers before that I swear have a green tinge to them. But of course I am red/green color blind so who knows....

It does... If you find that in poor taste I apologize but I couldn't resist.

I'd second the opinion that we're not entirely dissolving every last bit of plant cell in a hop, but leeching out of it what's desirable for beer. Green is only desirable once a year and easier obtained by food coloring. I'd bet if we took a beer with hops floating about in it we'd observe that these hops still maintain a green color. If that's not the case, and I haven't looked to find out, there simply aren't enough pigments in the chlorophylls to alter the color of beer due to the relative concentrations of the various color molecules present and the clear nature of water itself.

The pigments in chlorophyll are due to proteins involved in photosynthesis, which denature when boiled and therefore lose their color. Think about what happens if you've ever boiled something like broccoli for too long, starts to look more grey/brown than green.

There are some very smart people on this forum.