Beer without hops?

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rgraville

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I have searched and searched. I am certain I cannot be the first to have this question or to have given it a homebrew try, but for the life of me I cannot find any reference to, discussion of, nor style name for a fermented malt without an added bittering agent.
I do not mean a gruit or similar that uses an alternate bittering agent, just fermented malted barley.

The closest reference I could come up with is in the Wikipedia page for Ale there is a comment that Ale used to mean beer brewed without hops.

Anyway, I brewed a gallon and have it bottle conditioning now. I took a sip on bottling day and it is sweet but not bad at all. This is rather what I expected.
I know hops are a preservative so it won't have a long shelf life but that should not be a problem.

Any ideas of what this style would be called?
 
I would guess barley wine, but that name is taken. As far as I know something has always been added to make beer. Interesting, let up know how it turns out. :bigmug:
 
RPh_Guy said:
True Beer™.

I've made sour beer without hops, but never True Beer.


The main "preservative" effect is that hops (usually) prevent souring by lactic acid bacteria.
Click to expand...

Oy... that is a hell of a thread. I got a couple hundred posts in and still no actual discussion containing recipes, tasting notes, or suggestions. Seems like a giant troll thread, lol.

That said, I just boiled 1.5 gal of some pilsen light DME to a OG of 1.060 (about 1.25 gal post boil) , tossed in about a cup some Safale S-04 slurry from a previous outmeal stout (after chilling to room temp), and let it go. FG of 1.010. Used 1oz dextrose in 1 cup water at bottling time then added 1tbsp sugar water to each bottle as I filled it. Bottled straight out of the fermentor, no secondary or bottling bucket. Got 9 12oz bottles plus a gulp or so for tasting.
 
rgraville said:
Oy... that is a hell of a thread. I got a couple hundred posts in and still no actual discussion containing recipes, tasting notes, or suggestions. Seems like a giant troll thread, lol.

That said, I just boiled 1.5 gal of some pilsen light DME to a OG of 1.060 (about 1.25 gal post boil) , tossed in about a cup some Safale S-04 slurry from a previous outmeal stout (after chilling to room temp), and let it go. FG of 1.010. Used 1oz dextrose in 1 cup water at bottling time then added 1tbsp sugar water to each bottle as I filled it. Bottled straight out of the fermentor, no secondary or bottling bucket. Got 9 12oz bottles plus a gulp or so for tasting.
Click to expand...

I take that back. I was only ~150 posts in. At post 164 someone actually posted a recipe!
 
rgraville said:
Oy... that is a hell of a thread. I got a couple hundred posts in and still no actual discussion containing recipes, tasting notes, or suggestions. Seems like a giant troll thread, lol.

That said, I just boiled 1.5 gal of some pilsen light DME to a OG of 1.060 (about 1.25 gal post boil) , tossed in about a cup some Safale S-04 slurry from a previous outmeal stout (after chilling to room temp), and let it go. FG of 1.010. Used 1oz dextrose in 1 cup water at bottling time then added 1tbsp sugar water to each bottle as I filled it. Bottled straight out of the fermentor, no secondary or bottling bucket. Got 9 12oz bottles plus a gulp or so for tasting.
Click to expand...
So how did the beer turn out?
 
rgraville said:
I have searched and searched. I am certain I cannot be the first to have this question or to have given it a homebrew try, but for the life of me I cannot find any reference to, discussion of, nor style name for a fermented malt without an added bittering agent.
I do not mean a gruit or similar that uses an alternate bittering agent, just fermented malted barley.
Click to expand...

Although I wouldn't call gruit a "bittering agent" and I suppose generally speaking that non-hopped medieval beer was much sweeter than we can imagine now, there is a thread in the forum about a homemade beer made traditionally in Africa, South Africa if I recall correctly.

Not the usual sorghum beer that is normally thought at as a typically African beer, but a (barley?) beer which is just made at home with some yeast which is bought at the supermarket, and it is drunk immediately as soon as ready, no bittering, no bottling.

Also, I presume Kvas hasn't got any hop added, and that is also traditionally consumed immediately after brewing, no aging.

If you want information about a beer or a fermented cereal brew that doesn't use hop it is better to search for something different than "beer" because in modern world beer is tightly linked to hopping. What you are looking for certainly exist under many different "local" names.
 
Himalayan Chang is also without hops, but it's also without malt. Only cooked barley and a mix of bacterias, yeast and special molds. I have some at home, it's nice and sour.

Medieval ale probably also wasn't sweet at all, as the mix of bacterias and yeast would contribute almost instantly some sourness to the brew without any hops to suppress it. Remember, there wasn't any sanitation.
 
All ale prior to the 1300s was made without hops as they were not yet being imported to England at this time. I know you already know that this stuff was called gruit, but I don't know of any beer made without any bittering agent. Hops or another bittering agent work to counteract the sweet flavor of the malt. Sorry I can't be of more help!
 
I don't agree with this theory, that in the past they did not have antibacterial and therefore they drunk all beer sours.

For what I know gruit did act as an antibacterial agent, but it cannot impart the bittering that hop imparts. The "antiillness" properties (bacteria were unknown) of certain aromatic herbs were known since the middle ages. Balms were prepared with vinegar and herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme, dill, basil, and certainly many others, for all sorts of illnesses and the same herbs were used as preservatives in food.

That mixture of herbs protected the beer from infection, but not as long as hop did. A beer with gruit would last many days without problems, but not the many weeks that allowed beers to be exported from Germany to Britain. Incidentally, one can easily guess they were also used for cured meat and in cheeses for exactly the same reason.

We shouldn't be too hasty in concluding that our ancestors eat and drink spoiled food, I believe they did not. We lost their "technology" and we jump to wrong conclusions. They could bake bread that would last weeks and was still eatable (various references in literature, most famous in Italy the "pane del perdono" in The Betrothred). They did not eat molded bread for sure!

I don't think they drunk sour beer unless they wanted to, rather they drunk beer which tasted sage and rosemary in a way that we would find strange (imagine some Fernet or Amaro diluted inside your beer, and some sugar in it, or some coke with some beer inside).

After the discoveries of the Americas and of the Far East, spices from Asia such as pepper, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, angelica etc. were also certainly used in beer as preservatives and they arrived to us in "Trappist" beers where they were maintained after the introduction of hopping.

As we know, in Shakespearian Britain both "beers" (coming from Germany, hopped) and "ales" (locally produced and not hopeed) were available. I don't think any description can be found that says that ales were sours, although we know that ales were much sweeter than beers, so much so that beers had a "shocking" taste for the first consumers, they were distinctly different, a bit like Chinese or Japanese cuisine are very unconventional and different for our palates. If ales had been sour and beers bitter, we would find descriptions saying that beers coming from Germany is strangely not sour, but I never read that. References to ale and beer in literature of all sorts (both artistic and technical) of the time is certainly very abundant.

Also, ales were more expensive even though they were local (and one must imagine the amount of tariffs and the transport costs of the times were quite substantial!), which points me to a certain degree of ale wastage, or more difficulties in reaching scale economies that were possible with hopped beer, which again confirms that people don't drink sour ale unless they want a sour ale. All this IMHO, that is.
 
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I would guess that South American Chicha could also be called a no hopped beerlike beverage. Just chew up some grain, spit it back out into a pot and ferment. Done. :mug:
 
Birrofilo said:
I don't agree with this theory, that in the past they did not have antibacterial and therefore they drunk all beer sours.

For what I know gruit did act as an antibacterial agent, but it cannot impart the bittering that hop imparts. The "antiillness" properties (bacteria were unknown) of certain aromatic herbs were known since the middle ages. Balms were prepared with vinegar and herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme, dill, basil, and certainly many others, for all sorts of illnesses and the same herbs were used as preservatives in food.

That mixture of herbs protected the beer from infection, but not as long as hop did. A beer with gruit would last many days without problems, but not the many weeks that allowed beers to be exported from Germany to Britain. Incidentally, one can easily guess they were also used for cured meat and in cheeses for exactly the same reason.

We shouldn't be too hasty in concluding that our ancestors eat and drink spoiled food, I believe they did not. We lost their "technology" and we jump to wrong conclusions. They could bake bread that would last weeks and was still eatable (various references in literature, most famous in Italy the "pane del perdono" in The Betrothred). They did not eat molded bread for sure!

I don't think they drunk sour beer unless they wanted to, rather they drunk beer which tasted sage and rosemary in a way that we would find strange (imagine some Fernet or Amaro diluted inside your beer, and some sugar in it, or some coke with some beer inside).

After the discoveries of the Americas and of the Far East, spices from Asia such as pepper, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, angelica etc. were also certainly used in beer as preservatives and they arrived to us in "Trappist" beers where they were maintained after the introduction of hopping.

As we know, in Shakespearian Britain both "beers" (coming from Germany, hopped) and "ales" (locally produced and not hopeed) were available. I don't think any description can be found that says that ales were sours, although we know that ales were much sweeter than beers, so much so that beers had a "shocking" taste for the first consumers, they were distinctly different, a bit like Chinese or Japanese cuisine are very unconventional and different for our palates. If ales had been sour and beers bitter, we would find descriptions saying that beers coming from Germany is strangely not sour, but I never read that. References to ale and beer in literature of all sorts (both artistic and technical) of the time is certainly very abundant.

Also, ales were more expensive even though they were local (and one must imagine the amount of tariffs and the transport costs of the times were quite substantial!), which points me to a certain degree of ale wastage, or more difficulties in reaching scale economies that were possible with hopped beer, which again confirms that people don't drink sour ale unless they want a sour ale. All this IMHO, that is.
Click to expand...

Ale was drunk rather fresh, just a few days after fermentations tarted so there was a mix of still being sweet, alcohol being produced and sourness from the bacterias.

Gruit beer does not mean herbal beer. It is often confused but gruit is actually a rather specific term which cannot be used interchangable with herbal beer.

Look up The Gruit Beer Thread there you will find out that I didn't know it either, until Susann linked her excelent paper regarding this topic.

And btw. just because something is souring, does not mean that it is spoiled.

I brewed many herbal beers without hops with modern sanitation protocols and ALL of them soured over time. This is and was completely normal.
 
Birrofilo said:
I don't agree with this theory, that in the past they did not have antibacterial and therefore they drunk all beer sours.

For what I know gruit did act as an antibacterial agent, but it cannot impart the bittering that hop imparts. The "antiillness" properties (bacteria were unknown) of certain aromatic herbs were known since the middle ages. Balms were prepared with vinegar and herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme, dill, basil, and certainly many others, for all sorts of illnesses and the same herbs were used as preservatives in food.

That mixture of herbs protected the beer from infection, but not as long as hop did. A beer with gruit would last many days without problems, but not the many weeks that allowed beers to be exported from Germany to Britain. Incidentally, one can easily guess they were also used for cured meat and in cheeses for exactly the same reason.

We shouldn't be too hasty in concluding that our ancestors eat and drink spoiled food, I believe they did not. We lost their "technology" and we jump to wrong conclusions. They could bake bread that would last weeks and was still eatable (various references in literature, most famous in Italy the "pane del perdono" in The Betrothred). They did not eat molded bread for sure!

I don't think they drunk sour beer unless they wanted to, rather they drunk beer which tasted sage and rosemary in a way that we would find strange (imagine some Fernet or Amaro diluted inside your beer, and some sugar in it, or some coke with some beer inside).

After the discoveries of the Americas and of the Far East, spices from Asia such as pepper, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, angelica etc. were also certainly used in beer as preservatives and they arrived to us in "Trappist" beers where they were maintained after the introduction of hopping.

As we know, in Shakespearian Britain both "beers" (coming from Germany, hopped) and "ales" (locally produced and not hopeed) were available. I don't think any description can be found that says that ales were sours, although we know that ales were much sweeter than beers, so much so that beers had a "shocking" taste for the first consumers, they were distinctly different, a bit like Chinese or Japanese cuisine are very unconventional and different for our palates. If ales had been sour and beers bitter, we would find descriptions saying that beers coming from Germany is strangely not sour, but I never read that. References to ale and beer in literature of all sorts (both artistic and technical) of the time is certainly very abundant.

Also, ales were more expensive even though they were local (and one must imagine the amount of tariffs and the transport costs of the times were quite substantial!), which points me to a certain degree of ale wastage, or more difficulties in reaching scale economies that were possible with hopped beer, which again confirms that people don't drink sour ale unless they want a sour ale. All this IMHO, that is.
Click to expand...

Here's the link!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/the-gruit-beer-thread.629637/post-8337055
 
@Miraculix

Well, yes, I meant "gruit" as "any herbal addition meant as a preservative, different from hop". I see that not all herbal additions qualify as "gruit". I know all the fiscal history of "gruit" and how it was used to tax beer etc. but what I was saying is that herbal additions did preserve beer from souring for enough for it to be drinked. Basically one must contrast the Acetobacter bacteria and herbs can do that. (Maybe they are also antioxidants to some extent?)

As a side note, enologic oil is, I presumed, used since centuries, although I never researched the subject. Maybe beer also was preserved by keeping it isolated from air by a layer of oil. Oil doesn't mix with beer, but it isolates it from air in the barrel very effectively. If you tap the beer from the bottom, air will enter but the layer of oil will protect the beer, just like it happens with wine which is tapped from a vat (or which is racked from a demijohn).
 
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rgraville said:
I have searched and searched. I am certain I cannot be the first to have this question or to have given it a homebrew try, but for the life of me I cannot find any reference to, discussion of, nor style name for a fermented malt without an added bittering agent.
I do not mean a gruit or similar that uses an alternate bittering agent, just fermented malted barley.

The closest reference I could come up with is in the Wikipedia page for Ale there is a comment that Ale used to mean beer brewed without hops.

Anyway, I brewed a gallon and have it bottle conditioning now. I took a sip on bottling day and it is sweet but not bad at all. This is rather what I expected.
I know hops are a preservative so it won't have a long shelf life but that should not be a problem.

Any ideas of what this style would be called?
Click to expand...
I was going to say Malta, which you find in the Goya section of your supermarket. But it says Malta does have some hops and its not fermented. I recall tasting Malta and to me its a sickeningly sweet beverage. I recall reading some years ago that some guys were using Malta to make yeast starters. I don’t even think I’d use it for that.

I love how the descriptions say Malta is “slightly sweet” “like molasses.” 😳

This is why we add hops to beer - to balance out all that malt sweetness. I don’t know why anyone would want really sweet beer with no hops. But I didn’t see bottled water or hard seltzer coming either. Who knows, it may be the next big thing. 😀
 
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When I was a child, let's say around 1973 or 1974, for a short period a product appeared on the Italian market which was called Caramalz or Karamalz. It was meant for children, so it had less than 1,3% alcohol if the laws then were like the laws now. I have a very good recollection of it, actually I liked it a lot. It wasn't at all overly sweet for what I can remember, but I cannot say for certain as, in those times, I could even drink Coca-Cola. Less sweet than Coca-Cola I would say almost certainly. Very different. The maltiness was quite evident and pleasant. I suppose there was some hopping.
 
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When I worked in Brazil I fondly remember drinking beer down there that tasted very similar to Malta. It was very popular there and I wish I could brew it here. I believe the brands were Antarctica and Skol.
 

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