Description:

A friend of mine suddenly found herself violently allergic to hops a couple years ago.  She missed beer dearly and, hearing of my recent brewing addiction, asked me if there was a way I could brew a beer without hops… and oh, she also can’t have barley either.

Now, by most definitions beer can have all sorts of additional ingredients, but there are 4 which are absolute requirements;  Barley, Hops, Water and Yeast.  I’d been tasked with brewing something missing 2 of these crucial ingredients.

After a lot of asking around and a lot of research, I found that people had moderate success in replacing hops in beer and people had moderate success in brewing gluten-free, but there were virtually no examples of the 2 combined.

The first batch I brewed was horribly bitter and undrinkable.  I’ll spare you that recipe.  Below is one that, while different than what you might think of as beer, was good enough to satisfy the cravings of a beer-drinker who’d been without for a couple years.

Batch Size:  5.25 Gallons
Measured Original Gravity: 1.055 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
ABV:  5.6%

Recipe:

6 lbs 9.6 oz Sorghum Syrup [Boil for 60 min]

0.25 oz Juniper Berries (Boil 60.0 mins)
0.10 oz Wormwood (Boil 60.0 mins)

1 lbs Liquid Candi Sugar, Dark [Boil for 15 minutes]

1 Whirlflock Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins)

8.00 oz Malto-Dextrine (Boil 5.0 mins)

0.25 oz Orange Peel, Bitter (Boil 5.0 mins)

0.25 Cup Heather Tips (Boil 0.0 mins)

1.0 pkg Windsor Yeast (Lallemand)

Carbonated to 2.3 vols of CO2 (about 3.9 oz corn sugar)

Tasting Notes:

An interesting flavor.  Not what I’d call a normal beer, but not undrinkable either.  The sorghum is well masked by the dark fruit flavors from the Candi Sugar.  Light to medium-light body.  Balanced flavor, though the bitterness isn’t quite hop bitterness.  It’ll satisfy the craving if you happen to be unable to ingest barley and hops but still want a beer(?).