Going Hop-less

It’s no secret that Americans love their hops and it’s driving America’s brewers to extremes. In their ongoing effort to keep up with this thirst, craft brewers are now doing everything from quadruple-hopping their brews to serving them through repurposed water filters filled with hops…and still the public’s hunger grows. Yet in spite of this hop-fueled madness, there are a couple Maryland-based brewers that are choosing a road less taken. They are brewing hop-less beer.

Burley Oak Brewing Co., a small brewery located about 15 minutes inland from Ocean City, MD, brews what they call “Atypical Ales,” often with local ingredients. They have been brewing Hopless Beach, a 4% wheat beer made with locally grown wheat, orange peel, and coriander instead of hops.  

So, what’s the big deal – why go hop-less? Is it some sort of countercultural statement aimed at freeing us from the bonds imposed on us by “the Establishment,” and instilling the population at large with the values of peace, love, and recreational drug use? Sorry Timothy Leary, but not quite…

We talked to Bryan Brushmiller, owner of Burley Oak, and it turns out it was just the creative process at work. They had experimented with beers using orange peel and felt it imparted enough bitterness to replace hops in a light beer. They first brewed a version of a wheat beer that was on the hoppy side. When they tried brewing it the opposite way, sans hops, Hopless Beach was born.

“People like it because it’s light and drinkable, and it was fun to do something on the total opposite end of the spectrum from the norm,” explained Bryan. In addition, they often have live music in their taproom, so Hopless Beach, at a sessionable 4%, allows people to relax, take some time, and enjoy the music.

As it turns out, brewing hop-less is not just a creative anomaly; it’s also a nod to beer’s long and diverse history. Before the wide scale adoption of hops in the fifteenth century, beer was flavored with any number of herbs, spices, and other non-hop ingredients that added flavor, “medicinal” effects, or preservative qualities. By the fifteenth century, the Catholic Church managed to monopolize beer sales through their taxation of Gruit, which is basically beer without hops.

, Going Hop-lessWell, (spoiler alert) it turns out people love to drink and hate taxes. So, around the time of the Protestant Reformation, a group of rebellious, tax-avoiding, no-goodniks decided to stick it to the Catholic Church by making beer with hops, thereby avoiding ye-olde Gruit tax.

But Burley Oak is not the only Maryland-based brewer channeling pre-fifteenth century brewing practices. You may have read about the ‘International Arms Race’ between Flying Dog in Frederick, MD and BrewDog in Scotland – in which the two breweries went head to head to create a hop-less IPA. Flying Dog came up with a 7.5% Gruit made with herbs and spices instead of hops.

So are hop-less beers the next big thing?

I would argue that hop-less, or at least beers without hop flavor, have been popular for the better part of the last 100 years. I don’t think hop-less craft beers will have the mass market appeal to take over the industry any time soon, but I think most would agree that craft beer is about flavor, creativity, and diversity – and flavorful hop-less beers fit nicely into the mix.

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