Hop free beer

No, that's not an oxymoron. while on our trip to Co I read about a place called Very Nice brewery http://www.verynicebrewing.com/ in Nederland Co. They make a great brew called 'Greener's Gruit Ale'. It's a medievil ale predating the use of hops and substituting a healthy collection of herbs. Brewed with lemon balm, rose petals, and yarrow. The owner was great. We arrived around 4:00 in the afternoon and were knocking on the door. The sign on the door said they opened at 3:00pm on Thursdays and we couldn't work out why there didn't appear to be anyone in, until the guy loading up from next door pointed out it was Wednesday not Thursday so they were closed. He suggest we just walk in a shout, so we did. The owner came out from the back where he was brewing, he was happy to show us the set up and sell us a growler and give us some samples.

Great place, great beer, very highly recommended.

I have had hopless beer that was brewed with wormwood as a bittering agent. It was interesting but not something I would do again.

Back when I was 18 or so my roommates and I would regularly brew a medieval style ale that used black tea. We did it because we could get everything we needed at 10pm from a well stocked grocery store.

I look forward to trying the very nice stuff. With a name like that how could it go wrong?

As an interesting side note. I bought a hopped apple cider from Anthem brewing last night. Haven't tried it yet but I am betting it will be pretty tasty.

All's I saw was "Free Beer"...

ditchdigger wrote: As an interesting side note. I bought a hopped apple cider from Anthem brewing last night. Haven't tried it yet but I am betting it will be pretty tasty.

You gotta let me know how that is. I like cider, but it's all so sweet... A dose of bitter seems like it could be a really good thing...

I read an article that said that without hops, beer would be sweet. This sounds rad to me, as I hate bitter E36 M3 and love sweets. Never had any though.

In reply to DILYSI Dave:

There's some pretty sweet, malty beer out there. I tend to think it winds up a bit sickly-sweet, but I also like bitter beers (though not so much with the resinous, floral hoppiness).

I love a good IPA, the trouble is over the last couple of years the US Microbrew industry has gone hop stinking mad. Everyone is trying to out hop each other and it's gone too far for me. The Gruit wasn't that sweet, still a pleasant note of bitterness in the flavor, but not OTT. The brew said he'd heard that most ale used to be brewed like that, but once the Catholics got a strangle hold on Europe they made a push towards hoped beer, supposedly the hops had a dulling effect on libido, where the herbs in gruit had the opposite, and we know what kill joys they were for what we do beneath the sheets!

Ransom, interesting on the Cider with Hops, but a good cider isn't sweet, only the ciders you get over here. There are plenty of sharp ciders in the UK, but when I moved here everything was syrupy sweet. It's starting to change, Angry orchard does some nice dryer crisp ciders now.

I did a hard cider this spring, no sweetness at all. to make them sweet, you have to back sweeten after fermentation.

Sorry I'm late to the party folks.

Yes, gruit was a very common way of making beer for a very long time. You can also make beer with things like evergreen tips (that's what they did during the California gold rush). You just need some sort of flavor irritant like bitter, astringent, or sour to balance the residual sweetness.

The big thing that killed off the use of gruit to brew beer was the Reinheitsgebot (Bavarian purity law). The use of gruit was one of the major reasons for it. Trouble was, gruit wasn't a set mixture. There were no standards for what you could put into your beer, and brewers would not always use the best stuff. So, you would end up with beers that were hallucinogenic or even mildly toxic. When the Bavarians started exporting beers made with hops and you always knew exactly what kind of buzz you would get, the idea caught on.

As for cider. I don't like the idea of hopped cider. It does not have to be sweet. As pointed out, that comes from adding sweetness back in. I don't like this, so I drink dry cider. If you let cider ferment completely and don't add in sugar, it will end up dryer than beer and more acidic to balance what sweetness there is.

I totally agree that American brewers are going crazy with the drive to make beers bigger, hoppier, and more aggressive than they need to. It is reaching the point of absurdity and does not show off the actual talent of a brewer. It is far more difficult to create a nicely balanced beer.

Belgium has a lot of hop free beers, they are quite good.

I like the hop-craze. IPA's backed with a good malt body (see: Lagunitas' various iterations of Maximus) nail it for me. I like Sierra's Torpedo IPA, Bell's Two Heart, etc. I'm down in NZ right now, and have found that to a one (I'm on about 15 different "try's") they don't nail the hop/body balance like American IPA's do.

In reply to Teh E36 M3:

Those are not the sort of crazy over-hop-bombs of which I speak. They all show some understanding of balance.

But, I am fed up with brewers thinking IPA is the be all and end all of beer styles and not bothering to put as much effort into anything else. Or of bars that will put 5 different IPAs on tap and nothing Belgian or German style. Sometimes I want something golden roasty and smooth.

Beer Baron wrote: But, I am fed up with brewers thinking IPA is the be all and end all of beer styles and not bothering to put as much effort into anything else. Or of bars that will put 5 different IPAs on tap and nothing Belgian or German style. Sometimes I want something golden roasty and smooth.

I like most IPAs, but sometimes I wonder if the reason I like so many IPAs is because that's the only style a lot of brewers here know how to get right.

Beer Baron wrote: But, I am fed up with brewers thinking IPA is the be all and end all of beer styles and not bothering to put as much effort into anything else. Or of bars that will put 5 different IPAs on tap and nothing Belgian or German style. Sometimes I want something golden roasty and smooth.

Thank god, one of you isn't an idiot!

Where do you work so I can buy some decent beer?

I'm really tired of the over-hopped IPA garbage that is being served up here.

I miss being able to find a really good red ale. Tree Brewing in Kelowna used to do a fantastic unpasteurised red ale but they can't get the barley they were using anymore and it's long gone now :(

Shawn

In reply to Trans_Maro:

I work at North Coast brewing. Our hoppiest beers is Old Rasputin stout. I am most fond of ou PranQster belgian golden style. Red Seal is a good old school CA red ale.

Glad I'm not the only one that's tired of IPAs.

Though I've never really cared for them ever.

In reply to Beer Baron:

That's you guys?

I've had the Old Rasputin and it was very nice, I can't remember where I bought it though.

I'll have to try the Red Seal, thanks for the heads-up.

Shawn

e_pie wrote: Glad I'm not the only one that's tired of IPAs. Though I've never really cared for them ever.

To qualify, I am not tired of IPAs. I enjoy them very much. I just enjoy other beer styles as well. I am tired of nothing but IPAs. I don't want brewing companies to stop making excellent IPAs, I want them to make excellent other stuff too.

I don't want to walk into a beer bar and not have an IPA on tap. I want to walk into a beer bar and have a scotch ale, pilzener, stout, trippel, blond, amber ale, and an IPA, rather than them have 4 IPAs, a stout, and a light blond.

^ this x100!