HOPS Humulus lupulus. Cannabinaceae/Moraceae
Hops are native to Britain and relatives of stinging nettles and cannabis.
Botanical Description
The root is stout and perrenial and the stem (bine) that grows up from it every year twines round anything it can find reaching a great length. The bine is flexible and very tough, angled, prickly, and fibrous.
The leaves are dark green, heart-shaped, with finely toothed edgesand lobed, on short stalks, and usually grow opposite each other on the stem, though sometimes the upper leaves are alternate.
There are two types of hop plant: male plants and famale plants. The male flowers are in loose bunches or panicles, 3-5 ins long and no use for making beer or for medicinal purposes. The female flowers are in leafy cone-like catkins, called strobiles, about one and a quarter inches long, oblong with four sides, consisting of a number of overlapping, yellowish-green bracts, and they grow from the axils of the leaves. There is a small fruit (achene) at the base of each bract, covered with yellow translucent glands, which appear as a granular substance like pollen. It contains 10% of Lupulin, a bitter principle.
Cultivation
Hops need deep, rich, well-drained soil, and prefer a south or south-west aspect with freely circulating air. But they don’t like high winds, which tend to blow them down. The ground should be well-dug and deeply manured. Hops in Kent were usually planted in October or November, 6 ft apart each way. The plants were taken from cuttings or suckers, from the healthiest old shoots, planted out in nursery lines a year before being planted permanently.
Hops don't grow very much the first year and they don’t really get going until the third year. They like a lot of manure - manure from stables, rags, fur waste, fish waste, wood waste and shoddy in the winter, and in the summer rape dust and guano. Each year the bines are cut down to ground level.
Hop farmers in Kent used to spray their crop with all sorts of toxic chemicals and indeed in most parts of the world they still do. But if you are growing one hop plant, just to use the hops as medicine, you might not have problems with pests and if you do Quassia and soft soap solutions will kill the aphids which attack the hops and infect them with numerous diseases. Give the hop bines something to grow up - a tall pole or a string - which needs to be about twenty feet high if you want the bines to flourish.
History and symbolism
Hops are first mentioned by Pliny, who speaks of them as a garden plant among the Romans, who ate the young shoots in spring, in much the same way as we eat asparagus. The young tops of Hops used to be sold as a vegetable in Britain in the past.
The origin of the name Humulus is uncertain, but Lupulus is derived from the Latin, lupus (wolf), because, as Pliny explains, when the hop plant grew among osiers, it strangled them by its light, climbing embraces, as the wolf does a sheep. The name Hop comes from the Anglo-Saxon hoppen - to climb. Hops were first used in Holland in the beginning of the fourteenth century. In England they were not used in beer until two centuries afterwards.
Henry VI passed a law against hop growing in this country. He didn't want his beer polluted by them. In Henry VIII's time the hop was seen as ‘a wicked weed that would spoil the taste of the drink and endanger the people’. Edward VI however, granted privileges to hop growers.
By the twentieth century farmers in Britain grew most of the hops that the British breweries needed and indeed there was close liason between brewers and hop-growers, different varieties being used to make different types of beer. Sixty percent of these hops were grown in Kent, the garden of England. The tannins in the strobiles cause precipitation of vegetable mucilage in beer, so they help to clear it. They also flavour it with an aromatic taste.
Parts Used
Strobile. Don’t use hops for brewing beer because they have been sulphured as well as having undergone one of the most intensive spraying programmes and are, consequently full of toxic chemicals.
Constituents
The volatile oils (0.3-1.0%) in hops are partly responsible for their characteristic smell. Scientists have identified more than a hundred different compounds in these volatile oils, some of which have names like humulene and myrcene. Since these compounds are volatile, they evaporate quickly, leaving the smell of the Oleo-resin (3-12%) (the sticky substance under the petals), which explains why fresh hops smell so different from old hops. Hops also contain flavonoids, chalcones and Tannins (2-4%). Various phenolic compounds including alpha-bitter acids (e.g. lupulone, colupulone, adlupulone) produce the bitter taste.
How to Use as a medicine
Hops are sedative, hypnotic, antispasmodic and sleep-inducing. They contain isovaleric acid (the compound in Valerian responsible for its sedative action) and will calm you when you are feeling restless, especially if this is associated with nervous tension headache and/or indigestion. They are a milder sedative than Valerian but will often cure insomnia. You can make a tea out of them, but it is very bitter, or you can take 2ml (half a teaspoon) of the tincture. Traditionally people used to make a hop pillow to lull them to sleep, but few people today would want to go out with hair smelling of old hops. Don't think that you will benefit from the sedative effect of hops in beer because the brewing process destroys most of the compounds which produce the sedative effect.
Hops have also been used to ease the pain caused by inflammation of the gall bladder, neuralgia, priapism and mucous colitis.
The bitter compounds in hops stimulate the gall bladder, which in turn stimulates the liver, appetite and digestion. This will help people who tend to suffer from indigestion.
Humulone and lupulone, which are bitter acids, break down the membrane of Gram-positive bacteria so hop tinctures have been used topically to treat crural ulcers.
Dose
Dried strobile 0.5-1.0g or by infusion; 1-2g as a hypnotic.
Liquid extract (1`:1 in 45% alcohol) 0.5-2.0 ml
tincture (1:5 in 60% alcohol) 1-2 ml
Contra-indications, Warnings
You shouldn't use hops if you are depressed. They can make it worse.
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