![]() Many of the same elements that give hops their distinctive flavor also act as a preservative, allowing beer to stay fresh longer and travel farther. But flavor was only one reason hops became more widely used. Hops also add floral, herbal, and citrusy aromas. Brewers can adjust the ratio of sweet maltiness to bitterness as they brew by using different types of hops and modifying when they are added and how long they are boiled. The plant contains acids and oils with bitter flavors that contrast with the sweetness of the malt. Hops gained popularity in brewing for the balance they bring to beer. Still, hopped beers took several more centuries to become common. Hops don’t appear in the record in relation to beer until 822 CE when French Benedictine Abbot Adalhard of Corbie included specific instructions for the use of wild hops for brewing in his abbey rulebook. Hops also found widespread medicinal use as a treatment for anxiety and insomnia people often slept on hop-filled pillows to combat sleeplessness. Ancient Romans ate young hop shoots in the spring like we enjoy asparagus. Even then, Pliny was only interested in the botanical history of this wild plant rather than its alcoholic promise. ![]() Pliny the Elder was the first to mention hops in his Naturalis Historia, first published between 77 and 79 CE. But while we may think of hops as an essential brewing ingredient, hops are a relatively new addition to the brewmaster’s toolkit. Hops serve as both a flavoring agent and preservative in beer. He’s even started brewing in collaboration with Madison’s House of Brews. Joseph now has more than 5,000 hop plants in the ground at his farm, The Hop Garden. But Joseph and his wife wanted land of their own, so in 2013 they purchased a farm south of Belleville to expand hop production. An avid homebrewer, he decided to try growing hops on a two-acre plot of land owned by his father-in-law in Oconomowoc in 2009. “We just need more of them to start asking for local ingredients in that beer and be willing to pay a few cents more so we can bring it back to Wisconsin.” “People want to drink local beers,” says Rich Joseph, vice president of the Wisconsin Hop Exchange. Interest in local ingredients for local craft beer is driving a resurgence in the cultivation of hops and barley for brewing in Wisconsin. While the breweries remained, the ingredients scattered.īut that’s changing now. Yet this once hyper-local product – nearly every Wisconsin town had a brewery at one time, and barley and hops were major state industries – became anything but, as commercial grain and hop production shifted west in the early 20th century. The state’s abundance of raw materials (not to mention an abundance of marketing) made the state and especially Milwaukee famous for beer. Wisconsin is today virtually synonymous with the consumption of beer. The opening of the city’s first brewery – by a Welshman, not a German, alas – the next year hopefully put an end to that frightening blend. So thirsty that in 1839, German settlers in Milwaukee, desperate for a taste of home, mixed whiskey and vinegar with a little limestone to create a head that they called “Essig whiskey heimer” (something like homemade vinegar whiskey or vinegar whiskey of home). And most important of all, a beer-thirsty people called Wisconsin home. The state had barley, wheat, ice, and water. ![]() Long before Wisconsin became America’s Dairyland, Wisconsin brewed beer. ![]() Local brewers reviving Wisconsin hops, barley traditions ![]()
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