The Early History of Hops

<< 2022-12-06 10:15 >>

Hops growing up a house wall in Voss, Norway.

One of the biggest mysteries in the history of beer is where and when people started using hops in beer. We still don't really know the answer, but we do know some things, and what we know is quite different from the history of hops as most people understand it. So I wanted to straighten out the record a little bit. But before we get into that, let's set the context.

Hops have been growing wild in Europe for a very long time. Once the glaciers retreated after the last Ice Age, hops seem to have spread northwards to cover most of the continent. In Sweden hop pollen has been found already from 9000 BCE[1]. Because of climatic changes hops may at times have retreated southwards again, but overall hops appear to have covered most of the continent.

There are also early signs of hop cultivation in Norway, from around 500 BCE, and signs of it growing wild well before that[2]. Today hops grow wild in Scandinavia up to the Arctic Circle and beyond. So it's clear that hops grew across most of Europe long before beer brewing even began. Ireland appears to be an exception.

One striking thing I learned from analysing beer herb finds in archaeology was that the most popular herbs in northern European brewing appear to have remained the same from prehistoric times up to about 1900, at least in farmhouse brewing. Juniper is one example, and Myrica gale would be another.

It does seem, however, that hops were not used in beer in the earliest period of beer brewing. There are a number of early beer finds in Denmark and Sweden from around 2800 BCE to 200 CE that have been carefully analyzed to see what ingredients were used, and none of them show any sign of hops[8][9]. So while hops were available brewers seem not to have used them. And apparently the biggest change in herb use in beer is the introduction of hops, and its later almost complete dominance (outside of farmhouse ale).

So when and where did brewers start using hops? Martyn Cornell has done great work presenting what I think is the generally shared view: the first documented instance of hops in beer is from northern France in 822, from a statute written by the abbot of Corbie. Wikipedia has a very similar story.

This, however, is the history you get from written documents, but hop usage began at a time when brewing was mostly something people did at home, for their own household, and almost none of what they did was ever recorded in writing. So we must expect that nearly all of the early history of hops has gone undocumented, and therefore we must turn to other sources of information to cast light on the early history of hops.

Map showing the words for hops in various languages, with colours to indicate their origin. From a tweet by Øystein Hellesøe Brekke.

One place to turn is linguistics, where we find that of the words for hops, those of Slavic origin completely dominate eastern and northern Europe, and are used in the Nordic languages as well as Turkic and Finnic languages. Words with the same origin show up in Flemish dialects in Belgium as well as in Old English, so the Slavic dominance is greater than what the map is able to show. Exactly why is not clear at all.

The best place to turn is to archaeology, which is able to shed light on places and ages from which we have no written evidence at all. By far the best thing written on the early history of hops is Behre 1999[17], but it's now more than 20 years out of date, and the archaeology of beer has moved very quickly since then. So it's high time for an update. And as expected archaeology has been able to cast a rather surprising light on periods that the written evidence does not cover.

Let's look at another map.

Map showing archaeological finds of hops thought to be remains of use in beer brewing. The dots are shaded according to the age of the find.

As you can see from the map, the oldest find of hops thought to derive from beer brewing is from nothern Italy, dated to about 550 BCE. That's almost 1400 years before the abbot of Corbie. The find is from Pombia, where a beaker with dried-up remains of a drink were found in a grave. Analysis of the remains found pollen from cereals, trees, and hops. In other words, this was a hopped beer[3][4].

So did brewing of hopped beer begin in northern Italy in 550 BCE? Look at the map again. See how few dots there are? There are so few brewing-related archaeological finds at all that we know almost nothing. (There are more finds than what this map shows — this is just the archaeological reports I've been able to unearth over the years.) Brewing of hopped beer could have started 2000 years earlier 2000 km away from Pombia without anyone knowing.

Although, having said that, let's look at yet another map.

Map showing archaeological finds of beer brewing where we have some idea of the herbs used, shaded to indicate whether or not hops were found.

Ignore the black dots in Sweden: those are mainly from the 17th century onwards. The black dots in Denmark we already talked about: those are the very early beer finds. The interesting ones are the one in the Czech Republic, Kladina 900 BCE[19], and in Italy, Verucchio 700 BCE[20]. So it does look like using hops in beer before 1 CE was relatively unusual. The evidence is thin enough, however, that even that is a pretty shaky conclusion.

One thing about the Pombia find that may surprise some: this brewer was a Celt, probably belonging to the Hallstatt culture. This find is from before the Romans conquered this part of Italy, or indeed much of anything at all. Once the Romans did start expanding they called this part of what is now Italy Gallia Cisalpina, that is, Gaul on this side of the Alps. Eventually all of present-day Italy became wine country, but that was later.

What is quite striking is that the next hop finds, chronologically, is the cluster of four finds on the north side of the Alps, in southern Germany. That, too, was a Hallstatt culture area at the time of the Pombia find.

Hops growing on a pole at Lithuanian national museum, Rumšiškės.

The two oldest finds are from Aalen-Hofherrenweiler, roughly 250 CE, and Langenau, roughly 330 CE[5]. And while these are the "next" finds, they are eight centuries or more after the Pombia find, which gives you some idea of how sparse the record actually is. Both finds are from villages where remains of hops and grain were found together. That makes it likely that the hops were used in brewing, but it's somewhat uncertain.

(And what else did they find, besides hops? That's right. Juniper. As I've written before, juniper use in beer seems to go back to the beginning of beer brewing in Europe.)

Much more definitive, however, is the third find, from Trossingen, roughly 580 CE, where a wooden bottle with dried up remains was found in a grave that also contained a musical instrument, leading it to be dubbed "the singer's grave". Analysis of the remains found pollen from cereals and hops[5][6]. So people in this area definitely used hops in their beer.

The fourth find, Pfettrach, is fairly late by our standards, 850 CE, and the connection with beer is somewhat uncertain, but it does provide further indication that people in this area were brewing hopped beer at the time[7].

The German finds are all from Germanic peoples, who at that time had newly arrived in these areas from the north. In other words it's very possible that Celtic people from the Hallstatt culture were brewing hopped beer here, too, before the Germans arrived. The Germans may have adopted the use of hops from these Celts.

None of this necessarily means that the Celts were the first to use hops in beer, or that the use of hops in beer began around the Alps, but it's quite suggestive to see such a concentration of early hop finds. However, it's entirely possible that we'll find evidence of even earlier hop use somewhere else in the future.

Hops in the wort, ready to boiled, Shitovo, Russia.

The next set of finds is from what we might call the viking world, since they date from that era and are from regions dominated by the vikings at the time. In order:

• Ribe, Denmark, 725 [11]
• Kaupang, Norway, 825 [12]
• York, UK, 875 [13]
• Birka, Sweden, 875 [14]
• Staraya Ladoga, Russia, 925 [15]
• Järrestad, Sweden, 925 [16]

All of these are finds of hops together with grain, so none are definitive, but there are so many of them that it seems safe to conclude that it wasn't unusual among the vikings to use hops in beer. Note also the southernmost black dot in Sweden: that's Blackeberg, 975 CE[18], so it seems there were also viking beers without hops, which shouldn't surprise anyone.

When the Viking Age started the peoples of Scandinavia suddenly started travelling far more outside Scandinavia, probably at least in part because they started using sails on their ships. So it could be that this was a time when their contact with peoples further south expanded substantially, and they adopted the use of hops from them at this time. That's just a guess, but it does fit with the earlier absence of hops from beer finds in the same area.

Martyn Cornell wrote a great piece on the Graveney boat hop find, which is the southernmost of the two dots in the UK. In a sunken boat a very large amount of hops was found, so large it's assumed it must have made up a proportion of the cargo. It's been seen as something of an archaeological mystery, because we know that British commercial brewers were brewing unhopped beer up until the 15th century, while the Graveney boat is from roughly 950.

However, the find of hops in York from around 875 shows that probably people were brewing beer with hops in Yorkshire at the time. Which means the hops on the Graveney boat may well have been destined for brewing, and it's probably less of a mystery than it seemed when it was excavated in the 1970s.

But if people were brewing beer with hops in the UK in the viking era, why was 15th century ale unhopped? Well, we don't know how common hop use was. Maybe only a minority used hops, and maybe only in some regions. If hops were not that common, then commercial brewers may have had difficulties getting enough of it, and therefore not used it.

Hop garden, Sõru, Estonia.

A key point here is that while to our minds hops are an ingredient that's crucial for getting bitter flavour and protection from infection, those two things require boiling. And as far as we know, historically beer was not boiled until quite late. Martyn Cornell dug up a British description of brewing from the 13th century that describes raw ale, for example. (Much more about raw ale and the introduction of boiling in my book.) This means that further back in time, the use of hops very likely did not have the effects we're used to it having today. That is, the benefits of hop usage were much less before boiling than they became after.

What this means is that while people were probably using hops in beer in England already in the 9th century, hops were probably not seen as something that must be included in every beer. Hops may even have gone out of use in England before the 13th century for all we know.

As Richard Unger describes it, it's only from the late 13th century onwards that boiling hops in the wort becomes common in north Germany, and hopped beer really begins to to take over[10]. The later British conflict between brewers of hopped and unhopped beer is probably a consequence of this development crossing the channel to England.

The evidence is quite flimsy, but it may be that the beginning of hop usage should be understood as having two phases. First one phase where hops were coming into use, but just as one beer herb among many, and then later a phase where hops were combined with boiling, and this combination then took over. It's really the second phase that corresponds to hop usage as we know it.

What is very clear, however, is that brewers started using hops long before the time indicated by documentary evidence.

And what about the dominance of Slavic words for hops? That doesn't quite fit this history, but on the other hand there's very little evidence either way from Slavic-speaking areas. Basically we're not at a point where the archaeological evidence is firm enough that we can connect it with the linguistic data. However, beer archaeology has been making huge advances over the last years, and so it's likely more pieces will be falling into place over the years to come.

And who knows what we might find then. The earliest beer find in Europe is from Hornstaad/Hörnle 1A, by Lake Constance on the border with Switzerland, dated 3910 BCE. Starch analysis showed grain had been malted and fermented[21]. Those people also had hops, because in the 1980s hop remains were found in a well in the same village. But did they use the hops in beer? There's no reason to assume they did, but they certainly could have, and it's also in the area around the Alps.

Hop garden, Busemarke, Denmark.

Postscript

A blog post like this of course not something you just type up out of the blue. I've been aware for almost a decade now that there was much more to the early history of hops that most people were aware of, but there was so much to write about that I never got round to writing anything on it.

Over the years I kept adding to the collection of archaeology papers and my view of this history kept changing. What prompted the publication of this right now was basically that now I had the time and the inspiration.

In general, this blog post is just one of many, many examples of how my view of beer's history is completely different from the mainstream. What to do about that is something I'm pondering these days.

Also, if you know of a find that's not mentioned here please do tell me about it.

Sources

[1] Från tundra till skog. Miljöförändringar i norra Skåne under jägarstenåldern, L. Björkman, Riksantikvarieämbetet. Stockholm. 2007.

[2] Jordbrukskulturens historie i Oslo-området og Mjøstrakten belyst ved pollen-analytiske undersøkelser, Ulf Hafsten, Viking, 1957/58, vol 21/21, p51-72.

[3] Ancient Italic Beer The archaeological finds at Pombia (NO), Filippo Maria Gambari, Etruscan News, 15, 2001, p14.

[4] Il contenuto del bicchiere della t 11, Castelletti Lanfredo, Maspero A etc, in: La birra e il fiume, Pombia e le vie dell'Ovest Ticino tra VI e V secolo a.C, Gambari FM etc, Celid, Torino, 2001, p107-109.

[5] New aspects of agriculture and diet of the early medieval period in central Europe, Manfred Rösch, Veget Hist Archaeobot 17:225-228, 2008.

[6] Starkbier mit Honig, Manfred Rösch, in Mit Leier und Schwert. Das frühmittelalterliche Sängergrab von Trossingen, Barbara Theune-Großkopf, Likias, 2010.

[7] Early medieval wells from Pfettrach, Bavaria: cultural ecology of an early Bavarian village, Engelhardt B / Herzig F / Kobyliński Z / Krasnodębski D / Kuprijanowicz M / Michniewicz M, Archaeol Polona 37: 87-118 (pp 106-115), 1999.

[8] A biomolecular archaeological approach to ‘Nordic grog’, McGovern et al, Danish Journal of Archaeology, 2013.

[9] Egekistefundet fra Egtved, Thomas Thomsen, Nordiske Fortidsminder, bind 2, hæfte 4. København, 1929, p. 165-201.

[10] A History of Brewing in Holland 900-1900, Richard W. Unger, Brill, 2001. See pages 25-27.

[11] Arkæobotaniske analyser af prøver fra markedspladsen i Ribe, Robinson et al. In: C. Feveile, ed. Ribe Studier, Det ældste Ribe. Udgravninger på nordsiden af Ribe Å 1984–2000, Volume 2. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab Skrifter 51, Aarhus University Press, 107–132, 2006.

[12] Interpreting the Plant and Animal Remains from Viking-Age Kaupang, Barrett J. H., Hall, Alan Richard, Johnstone, C., Kenward, H. K., O'Connor, Terry, Ashby, Steve. In: Kaupang in Skiringssal, Kaupang Excavation Project Publication Series. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. 2007.

[13] Biological evidence from Anglo-Scandinavian deposits at 16-22 Coppergate, Kenward, H. K. and Hall, A. R. The Archaeology of York 14 (7). York: Council for British Archaeology. 1995

[14] Finds of hops, humulus lupulus L., in the black earth at Birka, Sweden, Ann-Marie Hansson, Arkæologiske Rapporter nr. 1, 1996, Esbjerg Museum.

[15] Archaeobotany and Palaeoenvironment of the Viking Age Town of Staraja Ladoga, Russia, Pact 52 - Birka Studies 4 - II: Marjatta Aalto and Hanna Heinäjoki-Majander 1997/1900/11.

[16] Aristokratin i landskapet. Paleoekologiska studier i Järrestads järnålder, P. Lagerås, In: B. Söderberg, ed. Järrestad – huvudgård i centralbygd. Stockholm. Riksantikvarieämbetet, Arkeologiska undersökningar, Skrifter 51, 243–270. 2003.

[17] The history of beer additives in Europe - a review, Behre, K.-E. 1999. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. 8:35-48.

[18] Tidigmedeltida grophus i Blackeberg. Halland, Vinbergs socken, Tröinge 6:4, RAÄ 128. Mölndal, Anna Aulin Häggström. Riksantikvarieämbetet UV Väst. Dokumentation av fältarbetsfasen 2004:1. 2004.

[19] The oldest millet herbal beer in the Europe? The 9th century BC bronze luxury bucket from Kladina, Czech Republic, Jan Jilek et al, Archaeometry 1–14, 2021, DOI 10.1111/arcm.12711

[20] Analisi botaniche del contenuto del vaso biconico, Marchesini M & Marvelli S, in: Von Eleson P, Eles Guerrerio e sacerdote: Autorità e communità nell'età de ferro a Verucchio, La Tomba del Trono. All'Insegna de Giglio, Firenze, 2002, p299-307.

[21] Mashes to Mashes, Crust to Crust. Presenting a novel microstructural marker for malting in the archaeological record, Andreas Heiss et al, PLOS ONE, May 7 2020.

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