Author: Professor Good Ales

Mythical poster at The LTS Good for What Ales You Beer Journal. Loves good beer. Hates same old, same old. Muses that Bud and Miller might as well be brewed in urinals. Drinks lagers too, if they are complex and interesting.
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Ye Olde Scribe and Maiden Millie’s: HOP – ING AROUND

The original article seems to have been lost, much like the Ark in Indiana Jones, in the archives of The Score, where it was first published. This article has been reconstructed from Scribe’s fading memory… as he referred to it, a few readers we contacted and a rough/unfinished draft Scribe still had. This column was published about 1999.

-Professor Good Ales

The Death of a Brewpub

Covington, KY

What kills a brewpub? Certainly the homebrewer should support any business that promotes knowledge, taste, an appreciation for good product and intrigues potential new homebrewers. Anything which kills it is our foe. There is an added incentive. It’s quite possible these very personal horror stories can serve as warning buoys for where the monsters might be; what NOT to do as a homebrewer.
Continue reading “Ye Olde Scribe and Maiden Millie’s: HOP – ING AROUND”

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Links to a History of Hops

Image courtesy of oregonlive.com
Image courtesy of oregonlive.com

Two articles on the history of hops that miss a few important points. For instance: the various versions of ale are “beer.” The basic difference is the strain of yeast and where it ferments: top or bottom. There also was a time when the church also opposed beer without hops because aphrodisiacs and psychotropics were used for gruit. Hops can tend to make some people sleepy, so lessening the chance of sin was considered a favorable outcome; at least as far as the church was concerned.

Here are two articles on hops with excerpts. We’re also going to invite a Nashville “hops-spert” (as in “expert”) to add his comments and suggestions to the mix.

“Pliny (61-113 AD) discusses hops in his study of natural history. To the Romans, it was Lupus Salictartius, from the way they originally grew. As the ancients said, hops grew ‘wild among willows, like a wolf among sheep,’ hence the name Humulus Lupulus.”

“The hop has its place in folklore. Along with the animals who are supposed to receive the gift of speech late on Christmas Eve, the hop is supposed to turn green in the same night.”

Link

“As with all change, there were sufficient English enthusiasts on both sides to keep the debate going for more than a century. Written testimony to the beastly nature of hopped beer and the equal evil of hopped ale is available in quantity. In 1424, hopes were condemned as an adulteration, and as late as 1651, hopped beer was described in John Taylor’s Ale Ale-vated into the Ale-titude as ‘a Dutch boorish liquor… a saucy intruder.'”

Link