Beer!

I have recently been on a nanobrewery excursion. A friend's son's wife is having a baby so he and some of his friends and some of the older folks opted, rather than hang around a gigantic baby shower, crawl around a few nanobreweries. We discovered some very interesting conepts in beer but my friend's son was VERY into brewing - only on the theoretical level, he has yet to have a sucessful beer.

But he brought up some very interesting concepts.


Beer is made of water, some sort of grain where the sugar has been enhanced somehow, hops, and yeast. The rest is just adjunct. Hudson began to teach me about the particulars of beer. My knowlege was even more theoretical than his, but as we drank we began to think about beer. I am SURE there are some home brewers inhabiting this place so you guys correct me if I am wrong.

The hops are used as a bittering agent in order to counterbalance the malty, sweetish or rich qualities of the other brewed ingredience.

Old recepies did not include the use of hops - I believe at least Germany has a rule, that beer is not beer unless it is made from hops andI believe the ingredients are limited to grains, water and yeast (not sure).

Now I had always wondered why different alcoholic concoctions seemed to have different psychoactive effects. Scotches tend to envigorate me, wake me up. Tiqullas tend to impart a very slight perception altering affect, and beer is always somewhat sedating.

I figured it was my imagination - ethyl alcohol is - etyl alchol, be it from wine or beer or distilates, right?

But hops DOES have an inherent sedating property, mescal Does have a certain slight psychoactive property - so what's up? Am I the victim of the same thought processes that had us all hold that THC was the only psychoactive in pot? and that mushrooms had but a single active constituant? Aren't all the best natural inebriants either artficialy or naturaly a combination of a series of psychoactives?

So what if other bittering agents were used instead of hops? What if (given that it doesn't make the beer taste like crap), ephedra was used as a bittering agent? how about yohimbine? Skullcap? Horny Goat weed? Kava? How about san pedro cactus extract?

Would it be possible to create a new range of beers that replace that soporific quality that hops imparts with some other minor ingredients? oh, not enough to have someone buzzed out of their minds on a single glass, but wouldn't it be possible to create as much subtle mental effects as flavors in one's "beer"? I am sure that some have used pot in their brew but I have neither tasted it nor heard about how it might work - would the agents have to be water soluable? would it have an effect on the ph? the fermentation process? would the chemicals survive the process?

I don't know, it was just a drunken thought at the time.

I rarely drink, they dont make enough beer for me. Alcohol + anything= trouble.

You know what I heard about hops and its wide usage was after the british had colonized India they discovered IPA....they found out it lasted much longer then any of there brews....

Natural preservation is what brought hops to our beer and I for one am very happy about that.

Now I have never added cannabis to any of my brews (just a few not an expert) but we have made extracts of cannabis and added it to a blackberry wine and a peach wine we made in 2011....sadly we only made about 15-18 bottles of each and somehow we managed to have more friends then we thought we had and blew out of the stuff but both where a wonderful drink...Love some wine and cannabis any day!

what you speak of are congeners in alcohol, impurities from the brewing process. most of the time these "impurities" are intended like the tannins in red wine, or the colors and tastes pulled from the oak barrels in the case of scotch and whiskey. In the case of tequila, traditional tequila starts off very nasty, so I would say the crazy effect from that is from fusile alcohols, like methanol.

In the case of cannabis, the different effects from different strains are largely from the terpenoids (smell compounds), that act as an entourage to the nerves in your brain and body, producing different highs.

The sedative property of beer comes from myrcene, a terpenoid shared both in hops and cannabis, and has been bred for its sedative qualities in hops since the 1500s? -I think. Also present in the cannabis that knocks you on your ass.

Totally possible, Im just starting to brew and grow myself, but yes! its a new area of refinement and just needs experimenters! Im brewing some mead with "juice" from the prickly pear, for the 2nd time after a rousing success, and I think a san pedro beer would be quite unique!

Just a few notes from me..

"some sort of grain where the sugar has been enhanced somehow" is incorrect. The grain is malted. That means it is germinated and then halted at a very specific time during the germination, giving you a bunch of starches and enzymes. When you cook your wort, two different enzymes nibble and chop the starch chains into shorter sugar chains.

Yes, hops are used to counter maltines. Your beer should not really be 'sweet' though, that would indicate an incomplete fermentation. It would also cause your bottles to explode when you carbonate them, assuming you didn't keg and force carbonate it. Hops is a natural preservative like somebody else posted. So is alcohol. That is why IPAs are higher than the average beer for both. It is my preferred style, as is common with many home brewers. We all eventually become hop heads.

In colonial times when hops weren't available, many brews used spruce tree new growth shoots. Other places used whatever they have access to. Hops are generally preferred.

As far as one of your questions.. and I paraphrase, "does X have to be water soluble?" Not necessarily. There is more in it than just water. There is also alcohol! =)

As for the rest.. my head just kinda spun. Sorry.

Good for your sisters husbands cousins former roomates sons friend* for learning everything about the theory first. I did the same thing, and once I brewed my first batch, I handed a bottle over to a certified beer judge. His response was, "I can't taste anything wrong with it at all. No errors and it conforms exactly to the style". That was the best review I could have ever hoped for.

* sorry, I couldn't resist.

Lysemith said:

Totally possible, Im just starting to brew and grow myself, but yes! its a new area of refinement and just needs experimenters! Im brewing some mead with "juice" from the prickly pear, for the 2nd time after a rousing success, and I think a san pedro beer would be quite unique!

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I call prickly pear "pussy wetter" cause mine comes out pink (I have it available locally and use fresh fruit) and the chicks LOVE it. Although, it's technically not a mead if you add fruit to it, it's called a melomel.

Also, people have experimented the F outta brewing beer over the ages. One of the first published beer recipes involved putting an entire chicken in the primary fermentor.

The Germans are very, VERY particular about their beer. Especially when it comes to the names. You can't add -ator to the end of it without it being a certain percentage of alcohol. All kinds of stuff like that is imposed.

totally with ya, just trying to keep it simple. I pluck my own prickly pear and process it, grows wild around here, and the first mead I did was just honey and prickly pear, and came out deeep purple and aged to an almost blood red. What im doing now is mixing prickly pear with apple cider from the locals here, an all local mead.

My conclusion for an awesome cannabis beverage is a liquer, made with long cured bud (3+ months), everclear, fruit, and sugar. So far Ive done a limoncello spiked with Acapulco Gold

If you can, age your meads for at least 3 years. It's worth it, but often times totally impossible. I don't touch mine for at least 3 months.

I wait a year until I tap into them after the 3month taster, and then they disappear

canndo said:

So what if other bittering agents were used instead of hops? What if (given that it doesn't make the beer taste like crap), ephedra was used as a bittering agent? how about yohimbine? Skullcap? Horny Goat weed? Kava? How about san pedro cactus extract?

Would it be possible to create a new range of beers that replace that soporific quality that hops imparts with some other minor ingredients?

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Short answer yes. You could add almost anything to the mash that you want, or dry hop anything you want. Dry hopping is adding a mesh bag of your hops or whatever while it is fermenting, after the brewing stage. You just need to make sure that whatever it is you are adding is not going to be so acidic that it is going to kill the yeast. I've been brewing for about a year now, and have thought about some of this myself. I'll probably do it eventually. I have about half a fifth of green dragon I've thought of adding some of that to a batch right before I bottle sometime. I'm doing 5 gallon batches at a time and have done over 100 gallons this year. Its fun for sure.

Lysemith said:

I wait a year until I tap into them after the 3month taster, and then they disappear

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Ahh, good. Yeah, I should have said I wait at least 3 months to test it, too. I don't start in on it for at least a year, either.

I went straight to the end of this thread..beer is good,in moderation..I'm in no way fit to moderate anything...hahahahahaahah!!!!!!

Ok..I joke...I will comment later as right now,well,I am enjoying life to its fullest.

Anyone ever drink 'hempen ale'?...was a brew going around for awhile..used hemp seeds to brew..I wonder if you took a bunch of seeds(regular pot seeds,not hemp),malted them and brewed a beer,would any compunds in the seeds transfer to the brew? As far as psycoactive compunds..I've only brewed beer once..I got a 'mr beer' kit from my brother in law and brewed a west coast pale ale..it was fun,but ill leave it up to the pros..that way I can have beer right then,instead of waiting 2 weeks..lol