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Herbal Beers

Beers of the World

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Beer has circled the globe more than a few times. One of the great treats a beer fan can enjoy is sampling the great variety of flavors that the beers of the world provide. In the U.S., beer fans have had the great pleasure of being served the beers of the world right here in our own country. Thanks to the rising popularity of fine ales, many of the beers traditional to Belgium, Germany, and the Nederlands are even being made by micro-breweries in the states. In the world of beer, there are still many as of yet unexplored brews from unexpected corners of the world. Here I will discuss a sampling of unique beers from 5 different countries: Africa (Palm beer), Brazil (Manioc), Tibet (Chang), and Scotland (Heather ale), all of which are described in Stephen Harrod Buhner’s book Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers.

Beer tends to be defined, in common parlance, as an alcoholic beverage made with hops, barley, yeast, and water. When talking about beers of the world, we must be ready to broaden our definition of the word beer to encompass that which is at hand. Grains of different types are used, from wheat to millet, rice, and even corn. In some place in the world, barley and hops are not available or simply do not grow there – and so, people make do with what they have.

For example, as we learn from Buhner in his book Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers, in Brazil, one native beer is known as Masato, or Manioc Beer. This beer has been made for approximately the last 4,000 years from a root called Manioc, which is also used to make tapioca. The Manioc root grows quickly, and attains a weight of up to 30 pounds within just a few months. It is used for food as well as to make the Masato. Traditionally, the root is chopped, boiled, and the starch to sugar conversion is catalyzed with human saliva. The women of the tribe chew the root pieces and then put them back in the boiling pot. Wild yeast is allowed into the wort to start the fermentation process. The Manioc plant is deeply ingrained into the cultures of the people who make it still, with it’s own mythology. You can read more about Manioc in Buhner’s book.

Another beer of the world made with unconventional ingredients (at least to the western world’s beer fan) is Palm beer. According to Buhner, palm beer is made with the unrefined sap from a variety of palm trees: date palms, coconut trees, moriche, sago, and palmyra being the most common. For many indigenous peoples throughout Africa, South America, and even India, Palm beer is an important part of life that transcends the physical world. Thus, it is often shared with the ancestors and used to help communicate with their spirits.

Getting back to more familiar ingredients, we shall look at Tibet. There, a brew called Chang is made mostly from Barley. Millet and buckwheat are used in some cases when barley is unavailable. What really makes this brew different from others, as we learn from Buhner, is the use of ginger-root-based yeast cakes for both the starch to sugar conversion and to start fermentation. Yeast cakes are made by crushing dried ginger root and mixing it with rice or barley flour. The mixture is then moistened and formed into cakes that are added to the boiled barley, rice, or millet that are being used to make the drink.

Heather Ale is an interesting beer of the western tradition that encompasses the herb heather as an admixture. The making of heather ale goes back to the culture of the indigenous Pictish tribes of the British Isles. In addition to numerous literary and folkloric assertations about the history of heather ale and mead, Buhner sites, in his book, an archeological dig on the Scottish Isle of Rhum. This dig discovered a pottery shard dating 2,000 years B.C. with “traces of a fermented beverage containing heather.” Heather ale has recently become commercially available in the U.S. as Fraolich ale, brewed in ???.

These five beers are just the tip of the iceberg. There are innumerable beers in the world, some still hidden away in remote corners, making the world of beer a very interesting place. New varieties of herbal beer are popping up among beer fans on the U.S. as well as inventive new micro-brews containing herbal admixtures, re-creations of ancient recipes, and brand new ideas in brewing. Keep your eyes open for the next invigorating (and inebriating) discoveries among the beers of the world.

Gluten-Free Beer

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For many potential beer fans, gluten intolerance has stopped them from ever quaffing brews made with barley. Those times are now over. Gluten-free beers are popping up all over the country, giving those with Celiac Disease (intestinal damage due to gluten intolerance) a new opportunity to drink with impunity. Not to mention that traditionally, beers from around the world have been made with alternative ingredients, some glutinous and some not. Thee is even a gluten-free beer festival held in Chesterfield, England. Here we will discuss some alternatives to using barley malt in beer, and some substitutes that are possible.

Over two million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease. This represents a large market of potential beer drinkers who otherwise have few alternatives. Many health conscious people are also found in this category of non-gluten imbibers. Gluten is a protein found in such grains as barley, wheat, rye, spelt, and oats. As far as beer brewing is concerned, barley is a huge concern if one is interested in making a gluten free beer. Oats and rye can be a problem as well, depending on what flavor of beer you are planning to make.

Some common substitutes for barley are millet, sorghum, rice, corn, and soybean. The good news is that substitutions are possible. The bad news is that many of them do not taste very much like the stuff made with barley.

Many beers in Japan are now being made with soy or pea protein along with hops and sugar to produce a product known as “third beer”. This technology is fairly recent, but sales are booming in Japan. With a few more years of experimentation, these bold new brewing techniques may be perfected to provide a great new gluten free beer like product.

Traditionally speaking, in Tibet, Nepal, and the surrounding areas, beer made with millet or rice has been a staple drink for many years. This drink, called Chang or Chung can be made at home and features the use of ginger and rice flour yeast cakes to promote starch to sugar conversion as well as fermentation. For more information about making your own Chang, read Stephen Harrod Buhner’s book Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers.

One beer manufacturer that is ahead of the game as far as gluten free beers go is Green’s. Their gluten-free beers are made using Sorghum, Millet, Buckwheat and Brown Rice, and contain no allergens. Their beers boast a high nutritional value as well, with 2x-3x the Zinc and Selenium content of Barley, an increased Calcium content, and rich in B vitamins. Their beers include the Quest (trippel bock), Mission (amber), and Pathfinder (dark) ales, lending a huge variety to a specialty market.

Credit to the first craft beer made with sorghum is claimed by Bard’s Tale Beer with their flagship brew called “Dragon’s Gold”. This beer has made a fine impression and weighs in at 3.8%- 4.7%%, with a hoppy, floral aroma, and, of course, no glutens. The Bard’s Tale brewing company has made a commitment to producing gluten free beer for all, and is an example that other brewers will hopefully follow.

The market for gluten free beer has grown considerably in Japan, while regular beer sales are slumping. With new varieties of gluten and malt free beer emerging in the U.S., this could possibly turn into a burgeoning market.

Medicinal Tonic Beers

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It may be a surprise to you, but in ages past, beer has been considered to be food, a benefit to health, and even a proper medicine for ailments.  This notion seems at odds with how we see beer today.  To look further into this seeming contradiction, we must look without the scientific and ethnocentric (and entheogencentric*) disdain that many hold toward ancient practices.  To put it bluntly, what we think of today as beer is not what these ancients thought of as beer.

One of the greatest changes in commercial beer production was the German so-called “Beer Purity Law”, or The Reinheitsgebot.  This "purity requirement"(as translated literally), is a law that was first instituted in Bavaria in 1516.  It mandated that the only ingredients to be used in beer were water, hops, and barley.  It has been put forth that this law was intended to preserve wheat and rye prices at a low rate, but had many side effects for regional beers in Germany.  At this time, admixtures such as cherries, nettles, and wormwood were not unheard of, and these beers became outlawed, along with any other possible combination of herbal components.  These components were often added to beers to make them not only more palatable, but also for their medicinal or even entheogenic* qualities.

Another factor to consider, aside from admixtures, is the natural state of a finished beer back then, and now.  By back then, I mean what is called in England Real Ale.  Real Ale is served from a cask, without force carbonation, and without pasteurization.  It is, in essence, a term used to affect the preservation of ancient brewing techniques.  Real Ale is often considered to be heartier than its pasteurized, highly carbonated counterpart, and is even sometimes served warm.  There are many recipes from the 1600s and before which call for warm beer, sometimes with toast and cinnamon on top, supporting the view of beer as food.

In his book Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers, author Stephen Buhner goes into great detail about antique recipes for tonic and medicinal beers.  Many of the recipes are claimed by their authors to be cures for various types of illness, as well as to be tonics (i.e. beers that enhance general health).  In the days before the germ theory became a widely held belief that inured itself in western medical practice, most folks thought of their health a little differently: tonics were sought after as a way to promote health, instead of people being frightened by the potential presence of germs.  This same idea was revealed by Louis Pasteur himself as he lay on his deathbed, as he recanted his Germ theory as harmful to the practice of medicine.

Let us look at how this idea can be applied to beer.  The change that comes with the process of Pasteurization is important.  Before being pasteurized, beer is literally alive.  Living yeast exists in the beer, an organism which has its own defenses against harmful “Germs”.  These defenses are transferred to the beer, supplemented by the anti-bacterial properties of Hops, and protected by the proper kegging of the beer.  All this makes the beer quite a different creature from the Pasteurized, dead ales which are dominant in the U.S. and many other countries.  While the germ theory and the practice of Pasteurization help commercial interests to make money off of beer, in my opinion, these practices likely transform the beer into a less healthy beverage overall. 

These are a few manners in which the essence of beer has changed over the ages.  There still exists today the tradition of brewing real ale (as defined by CAMRA); ale that is more alive, and potentially healthier for you than most commercially produced ales.  For more information on Medicinal Tonic Beers, you can check out the books Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers by Stephen Buhner, and for more information on the U.K.’s CAMpaign for Real Ale see their website at http://www.camra.org.uk/.

*FROM WIKIPEDIA: An entheogen, in the strictest sense, is a psychoactive substance (most often some plant matter with hallucinogenic effects) which occasions a spiritual or mystical experience. In a broader sense, the word "entheogen" refers to artificial as well as natural substances which induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional shamanic inebriants, even if used in a secular context.