Artichoke Amber Ale!!??

A few weeks ago, I added a new part-time job in Tempe, AZ to my monthly schedule. Little did I know this dental position would somehow, someway involve beer recipe design for brewing with alternative ingredients..... but that's exactly what happened.

On my first day at the new office, I was pleased to find out that one of my former colleagues also worked there at the clinic. I hadn't seen him in likely 10 years or so. We had worked well together before, and it was nice to see a familiar face. We caught up on things and I was happy to see him again. So far, so good.

Then he said to me "Hey Greg, aren't you the beer guy? I remember you used to brew beer at home." Well, as a matter of fact, yes I am ;)

He then went on to tell me a wonderful story about how he and his wife traveled to Munich and Prague and few years back to experience the beer gardens and culture there. They enjoyed the trip immensely and he explained to me that beer was his favorite alcoholic beverage. Certainly we have something in common! But after they returned home, he began to experience some throat irritation and signs of an allergic response every time he had beer. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! It got so bad, he decided to go to an allergist and try to figure out what the heck was going on. They ran some tests but couldn't find a specific solution to the beer problem. So he decided to stop drinking beer altogether and stuck with wine or cocktails. He said he hasn't had a beer in over a year! I started thinking that this was one of the most depressing stories I have heard in a while. Something needed to be done about this! I put on my homebrewer's hat, with a touch of science as well.

That got me thinking.... I asked him if he could drink other alcoholic beverages without any issues, he said "yes, no problem". I said well what about bread or pizza (white, wheat, rye, etc..) and he said again "yeah no problem" as he ate his deli sandwich for lunch. So no gluten issues. Same thing for rye whisky. So it seems he can have 1) barley/wheat/rye 2) yeast, since all breads are fermented with yeast and 3) alcohol in forms other than beer. What could it be?

Ahah! Maybe it's freaking hops! As we all know, according to the Reinheisgebot of 1516, beer traditionally is made with only 4 ingredients: barley, hops, water and yeast. So I began researching how one could make a beer without hops to test my hypothesis. Traditionally, these beverages were called gruit and used all kinds of spices and herbs. I came across a youtube channel of some Italian guy who used artichoke leaves as a bittering agent to make beer. Apparently, they are extremely bitter. Sure enough there was a scientific study that compared using artichoke leaf beer to traditional hopped beers and there was a dosing amount that seemed to work best (2g/L) to mimic the taste of hops.

So I designed a recipe, also adding some spruce tips to the batch as well for additional bittering and complexity. Here's the recipe I used as a test run. I kinda used whatever grains I had on hand and ordered the artichoke leaves from Amazon. I used 0.6oz for a 1.19 gallon batch (4g/L), adding more than the study suggested to make sure there was some bitterness. I guess I would call it an amber ale but who knows for sure.

I brewed the batch old school on the stovetop, making sure I didn't use anything that had touched hops before. I chilled the wort and fermented it as usual using S-04 yeast at 68F. The beer ended up around 4% and actually had a decent amount of balance due to the bitterness! First impression is wow better than I expected, also more bitter than expected. I would pull back the artichoke leaves to 2g/L for sure and possibly omit the spruce tips to dial in the bitterness. The dry finish helped but the malt bill is a mess so it needs to be simplified. Keep the rye for that earthiness though, maybe a pilsner would work.

So now the real test... I brought some into work for my buddy in a growler 2 weeks later so he could try it that evening with dinner. I anxiously awaited his text, hoping I wouldn't have to go the hospital or something if he had an allergic reaction. Around 8PM I finally got the text - "No allergic reaction and it tastes good to me, so nice to have a beer again!"

Success! Clearly, he has a hops allergy and thankfully he can still drink beer that is bittered with alternative methods other than hops. This is so great! Hopefully I can convince him to become a homebrewer and have some nice tasty beer on hand all the time ... I love happy endings ;)

Moving forward, we plan on making another batch of beer soon, likely a pilsner or American lager. Unfortunately the artichoke leaf dosing only allows for around 10-15IBU so we will have to find beer styles that aren't super bitter. Also note that it's not really IBUs (isomerized alpha acids) but something similar to 15IBU in a normally hopped beer. Apparently the artichoke flavor becomes overpowering at too high of a dose. Also, I hope to investigate what component of hops he may be allergic to.

I will post again with any new developments, Prost!