I know this may seem against everything we know…but I have a friend who is allergic to hops…anyone have any ideas for a brew that may work without hops??? I was thinking maybe a pumpkin or Xmas holiday seasonal seasonings may offfset those tases, but I was curious if anyone had any insight…
Do a search for “gruit”.
Perhaps you can look into using some yarrow as an alternative bittering agent?
It may be worth some experimentation.
Apparently according to some random site on the internet, hop allergies are sometimes caused by hop pollen that makes it through the brew process:
http://www.peanutallergy.com/articles/o ... -allergiesI don’t know how true this is. If it is, there is a good chance that boiling will denature the pollen, which means beer brewed with only bittering additions, and particularly avoiding flameout additions or dry hopping may not evoke the allergy response. Alternately, beer brewed with hop extract may not posses the whatever component of the hops to which your friend is allergic. On the other hand if the allergies are to the bittering compounds themselves, there may be no alternative but to look for alternate bittering spices.
Obviously you should only experiment with this if the symptoms of the allergy are mild.
