February 2015 Ale is not beer

What do I mean by ale is not beer? Today you would say that ale is a kind of beer and it would be true, however historically ale was not beer. They were separated by the fact that beer contained hops, ale did not. It was not until the late 16th century that the terms started to merge slowly. And of course there were a bit of intolerance between ale drinkers and beer drinkers, for example in 1530 Henry VIII put a ban on the use of hops for his own brewer at Eltham Palace. Or to be precise he banned the use of hops and/or brimstone in his royal ale. Also hops were considered rotestant plants and as such it was also unpopular in regards of religious reasons in some countries (in England it came from the Low Countries if it was not imported).

However in 1552 the ban was lifted by Edward VI and during that time even the most stubborn ale brewers started to see the good attributes that came from hops, one of them being that it acted as a preservative. According to Ian S. Hornsey and his book a history of beer and brewing, one of the first recipes containing hops in England is to be found in Arnolds book The customs of London which is published during the first of the 16th century.

Lets go back and consider that before the brewing of beer (the historical definition of it) the brewing of ale was widespread, but what sort of preservative could be used instead? From the book New System of Agriculture by John Laurence we find his statement (although it has been debated on the accuracy of it): Hops were first brought from Flanders to England, Anno 1524, in the 15th year of K.Henry the 8th, before which Alehoof, Wormwood etc. was generally used for the preservation of drink. This tells us that brewers did understand the importance of preserving their drink and from experience they could understand and experiment with what kind of additives that could aid them in their task.

This is England, but what about the rest of Europe? This aversion towards hops seems to be a religious one, since the plant was considered a Protestant one and therefore the English establishment did not approve of its use. One letter, written to Henry VIII by Bishop Tunstall there is proof however that in Spain hops was used in plentyfull (the letter is to long to be repeated here).

For how long was England this stubborn? As I wrote in the beginning, the term ale and beer slowly merged together and by the end of the 16th century brewing with hops became more and more common and by 1577 hops were being cultivated in a more serious manner. To speculate a bit without real proof it is not far fetched to think that people then were as stubborn as we are today when debating who is right and who is wrong. So when saying that a drink containing hops is better than the traditional drink that does not contain this additive and it's mostly about taste (partly about flavour as well) it's easy to see that some folks would not give in so easily and refuse to admit that new things could replace (or blend with) the old ones, thus the definition of the two drinks could live on for quite some time

To sum this up: When we talk about beer we have to remember that the term did not mean the same thing before the 17th century as it does today.