Hops
Humulus lupulus
The sedative in the beer. This was not an accident.
Overview
Hops is the plant that changed the character of European intoxication. Before hops became standard in ale-brewing in the fifteenth century, ale was flavoured with gruit — the herbal blend of bog myrtle, yarrow, and other bitter herbs that produced a drink notably more psychoactive and less stable than hopped beer. Hops replaced gruit partly for flavour, partly for the preservative quality of the acids in the cone, and partly — though this was not the primary argument made — because the resulting drink was calmer and less likely to produce the aggressive alterations of consciousness that gruit ale was known for. The sedative quality of hops had its own application: hop-filled pillows were used for insomnia long before controlled trials confirmed that the compounds in hop cones — methylbutenol in particular — have genuine sedative activity. George III is said to have slept on a hop pillow.
Botanical Notes
A vigorous, twining, herbaceous perennial climbing vine reaching 6–8 metres in a single season, dying back to the rootstock in winter. Leaves are deeply lobed, rough, and bright green. Female plants produce the strobiles — the hop cones — papery, green, aromatic structures containing the resinous yellow lupulin glands in which the bittering and sedative compounds are concentrated. Male and female plants are separate; only female plants are grown commercially. Native to temperate Europe and western Asia; extensively cultivated in hop gardens across England, Germany, and the Czech Republic. The lupulin glands contain alpha and beta acids (humulone, lupulone) and volatile oils responsible for bittering and flavour.
Lore & History
The arrival of hopped beer in England in the fifteenth century was not welcomed by everyone. Andrew Borde, a sixteenth-century English physician, wrote that hops "doth make a man fat and doth inflate the belly" and distinguished carefully between ale (unhopped, English, good) and beer (hopped, Flemish, foreign, suspicious). The debate persisted for a century. By the seventeenth century, hops had won entirely. In hop-growing counties — Kent, Herefordshire, Worcestershire — the hop harvest was a significant social event, with migrant pickers from London and the Black Country living temporarily in the hop gardens, a tradition that survived into the 1960s. Dried hop cones were strewn among linen to repel moths and insects; hop pillows became a fixture of the Victorian bedroom.
Warnings
Safe for most people. Hops has a documented mild depressant effect on the central nervous system — avoid combining with sedative medications, benzodiazepines, or alcohol at medicinal doses. Those with depression should use with caution, as hops can deepen depressive episodes. Female hop cones cause contact dermatitis in a significant proportion of commercial hop harvesters — a sensitivity that develops with repeated exposure. Dogs should not be given hops in any form — hop toxicity in dogs is serious and can be fatal.