Brew your own theory!

Tired of modern politics yet?

I don’t know if anyone is in the mood for a medieval conspiracy theory, but I just learned about a good one. I’ve been reading up on the history of the use of hops (which most people know is a relative of marijuana; both being in the Cannabaceae family), and a rather odd factoid jumped out at me. The hopping of beer seems to have come into dominance in Germany at the height of Martin Luther’s struggle with the Catholic Church. Before that, most beer took the form of a non-hopped brew called gruit (made with a variety of interesting herbs):

Gruit was a combination of herbs, some of the most common being mildly to moderately narcotic: sweet gale (Myrica gale), mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), horehound (Marrubium vulgare), and heather (Calluna vulgaris).

The transition from gruit to hopped beer

The phasing out of gruit from brewing is linked to various factors. A possible political factor would be the general emancipation of princes (mainly German) from the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church in a movement that eventually was to lead to Martin Luther’s protestations turning into a fully-fledged uprising of those princes against the authority of Rome, in what is known as the Reformation. Princes wanting to undermine the power of the Church therefore tended to promote brewing with hops rather than gruit, to try to cut off this revenue for the monastic orders who had a monopoly on it.

Some authors present the switch to hops as a Protestant crackdown on feisty Catholic tradition, and as a Puritan move to keep people from enjoying themselves with aphrodisiac and stimulating gruit ales by imposing the sedative effects of hops instead.[2] However, the switch to hops started in Germany some four or five centuries before the Reformation.[citation needed] Its later gradual enforcement in the 15th and early 16th centuries can in part be traced through legislation drafted by political rulers before the Reformation started.

For example, the Bavarian Purity Law, which stipulates that the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley, and hops, dates from 1516, the year before Martin Luther initiated the Reformation by posting his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Earlier still, in 1434, the Statuta Thaberna[3][4] in Weissensee, Thuringia, already restricted beer brewing ingredients to malt, water and hops.

Another factor behind switching from gruit to hops may have been concern about public health.[citation needed] With stimulating, psychotropic and ultimately poisonous plants such as henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) or even deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) being used routinely in brewing, local lords wanted an herb which would be easier to monitor than a complex mix.[citation needed] Hops are easily cultivated in much of continental Europe and, their innocuousness being relatively clear,[citation needed] were ideally suited to the task.

As a modern hop loyalist maintains, the Catholic Church had a monopoly on gruit, and this undoubtedly played a role in the transition:

The politics of gruit are interesting. Apparently, the church at the time required that all beer be made to the gruit style, but they didn’t give out the recipe, thus creating a beer monopoly for the church. If you wanted beer, you had to go to the church. It was, in effect, a beer tax. There are some theories that the Reinheitsgebot required the use of hops as the only acceptable herb in beer as a form of retaliation against the church’s gruit. The Reinheitsgebot was passed as law in 1516, one year before Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, thus beginning The Reformation. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.

Hey, I don’t have to decide! I just love the theories themselves, and my opinion at this stage is still unformed. Fascinatingly, though, a number of psychoactive substances and properties were in the various herbs that went into gruit, and the claim has been fervently made that gruit herbs were aphrodesiac, with hops being precisely the opposite:

To understand why hops replaced gruit it is important keep in mind the properties of gruit ale: it is highly intoxicating and aphrodisiacal when consumed in sufficient quantity. Gruit ale stimulates the mind, creates euphoria and enhances sexual drive. Hopped ale is quite different. Contemporary scientific research has conclusively demonstrated that hops contains large quantities of estrogenic and soporific compounds. In fact hops has been used for many thousands of years in traditional medical practice as a natural estrogen replacement therapy and to help insomniacs sleep. The high level of plant estrogens in hops makes hopped beer an extremely good drink for women in menopause but also makes it a very bad drink for men. Consumption by men of large levels of estrogenic compounds can lead to erection problems later in life. In fact, there is a well-known condition in England called Brewer’s Droop which is regularly contracted by bartenders and brewers after years of exposure to hopped beers and ales.

While there is certainly a note of bias there, it only adds to the fun. Besides, how could any decent conspiracy theory ever hope to gain traction without bias? Anyway, would be theorists can take delight in the fact that there are plenty of possible sources of collusion.

The historical record is clear that hops’ supplantation of other herbs was primarily a reflection of Protestant irritation about “drugs” and the Catholic church in concert with competing merchants trying to break a monopoly and so increase their profits. The motivations were religious and mercantile. Reasons not so different than the ones used to illegalize marijuana in the United States in the twentieth century. That this occurred is regrettable. Though gruit herbs do possess mild inebriating activities they are actually quite healthy for people when used in moderation. Though it might seem from the descriptions of the ancient writers that gruit herbs are in the same category as what we call “drugs” today they are in fact more similar in their effects to tequila than marijuana. The writers who described the dangerous effects of gruit were in fact those who wanted to outlaw their use and stop the indiscriminate use of excitants (as well as make money by being able to brew a competing product). But once hops supplanted gruit the vast majority of men throughout the western world were still being drugged by their beer only now they were being drugged into a dull, flaccid sleepiness.

There’s also a very plausible claim that certain gruit brews were precisely what were called “witches brews” which helped fuel hysteria:

By far the most controversial ingredient used in gruit, and also one of the most widespread, was henbane and its close botanical and chemical cousin thornapple. Henbane is Europe’s equivalent to jimson weed, a viciously toxic, unpredictable and uncontrollable hallucinogen with a long history of use by witches and shamans. A small touch of henbane in your system and you’d likely suffer little more than a bit of constipation and a draining of the sinuses. Multiply that dosage a few times, as apparently many brewers did, and you might experience wild dreams or nightmares. Multiply that dosage again, as apparently a few brewers were foolhardy enough to do, and you could expect to experience visions of the past and future, perhaps even enter the realm of the dead…or so said the shamans. Multiply that dosage again, as you might do to blow off steam after a particularly hard day of thatching and winnowing, and you might very well forget which species you are. Multiply it one more time, as you might do if it was a particularly hard week, and you won’t have to worry about your role in depleting the world’s oxygen supply any more.

Clearly this herb is more at home in a witch’s brew than in yours, as a few amateur “heritage brewers” have discovered to their horror. And they discovered this fact precisely because henbane was so widely used in gruit that it might be hard to find an authentic gruit ale recipe that doesn’t list either henbane or thornapple as an ingredient. Fortunately for those who drank it on a daily basis, one develops tolerance to its effects quite rapidly.

Unfortunately, one never knew just how much one might get. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the use of this herb in beer is that when traveling, one never knew how much henbane the local brewer might have used. Travelers were often warned of towns or taverns where particularly potent beer was served. Visitors might become temporarily “demon-possessed” from their typical draught, and those who lived in that town might fall ill from withdrawal visiting towns where henbane was used sparingly. We don’t seem to find much mention of henbane poisoning in records of the time, however, perhaps because these episodes were often attributed to “brew witches”.

Henbane was in fact used in witchcraft (or pagan shamanism if you prefer a less emotionally-charged term) as an aid to divination. The witches who used it tended to be among the most highly respected individuals in the tribe or village. But with Biblical law came Christian values. The cauldron, so often associated with witchcraft in medieval Europe, could easily be seen as equivalent to the brewer’s kettle. Batches of beer brewed with particularly potent crops of henbane or thornapple could easily produce symptoms in the heavy drinker that might be seen by a casual observer…oh, let’s say an officer of the Inquisition perhaps…as supernatural, even demonic in origin. And since it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation of the 1400s that the brewing industry managed to completely banish women from the brewhouses, who do you think got the blame? Women, of course. A quick-witted male brewer or frightened monk might even be able to pass off the blame for an unexpectedly potent batch of beer on the old crone across the field who helped him gather the herb.

The extermination of “brew witches” is well-documented in beer lore, and apparently it wasn’t just beer madness for which they were blamed. Virtually any brewing mishap could be passed off as the result of supernatural interference. And given the lack of understanding of sanitation and the toxic effects of spoilage, one can easily imagine how much blame there might be to parcel out.

I have no idea where to go with any of this. But like I say, it makes for a nice medieval conspiracy theory.

Most of the herbs that went into gruit are for sale here.

Alas, there don’t seem to be too many online henbane dealers. This one is out of stock, although if you want to grow your own, the seeds are available at Amazon.com.

Still, it seems like a lot of trouble for a lazy American like me who enjoys instant shortcuts and ready-made recipes.

Too bad some Madison Avenue marketer can’t come up with a clever concoction like this:

He that wanteth gruit, let him go forth and do it!