Within the community of beer-drinkers (and therefore, almost certainly, among the community of non beer-drinkers), there are an alarming number of people who are completely unclear about the role that hops play in beer. Many people are unclear as to what a hop actually is, and many others believe they are what beer is fermented from(!). Clearly, there are misconceptions that must be dispelled.
What's a Hop?
Broadly speaking, hops are the flowers of the hop plant. It is in the same botanical family as hemp, which has predictably led numerous resourceful idiots to try to smoke it. If you live in a hop-producing part of the world, you can drive out to the fields and see this unique, vine-like plant soaring majestically into the air while you fantasize about all the great beers they will help to create.
During the brewing process, hops are boiled, and their bittering alpha-acids extracted. There are also a variety of compounds that are found in the hops which add flavors and aromas, though these will dissipate if boiled for too long. For that reason, brewers will add hops in stages: bittering hops at the beginning of the boil, and aroma hops at the end. A brewer can also “dry-hop” a beer, which generally entails adding a fistful of hops to the secondary fermenter. These hops are therefore not boiled at all, and so contribute only aromatic and mild flavor qualities. Hops add no fermentable sugars - they are strictly a flavoring agent.
Hop History
Hops, while a beer staple, didn’t get their start until fairly recently in beer’s history. Long used as a folk remedy for all manner of ailments, they are first documented as a flavoring agent in beer in 736 AD, but at the time, they were only one of many herbs, spices, and botanicals used to flavor beer, and were in the company of spruce tips (delicious), ginger, wormwood, and sage. Hop use became widespread in Germany by the middle 1500s, but they didn’t become wildly popular in England and other areas until later yet.
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