The Many Uses for Hops (Outside of Beer!)

Of course, hops are best known for their pivotal role in brewing beer. But Humulus lupulus has a range of medical, culinary, and craft benefits as well.

Here are a few ways you can enjoy hops outside of your favorite beer:

Medical

One of the most well-known medical uses is as a sedative, or sleep aid.

You can consider making a hop pillow. All you need is a piece of soft fabric in whatever size best suits you and hops. Simply fold your fabric in half and sew it on two sides, basically making a small pillow-case. Once you have your pillowcase, stuff it with some dried whole cone hops. You can even add in some other herbs with sedative properties, such as lavender, chamomile, roses, lemon balm, etc. After stuffing it, sew it shut. Put it either beside your pillow/bed or inside your regular pillowcase. NOTE: If you wake up feeling groggy, you’ll likely want to discontinue its use. Individuals react to hops in different ways.

You could also brew a hop tea, which can help calm high levels of stress and anxiety, supply antioxidants and, of course, help you sleep. For teas, aroma hops make a better choice than high alpha varieties, but this will all depend on your personal preference. Like the hop pillow, you can add other herbs like lavender, lemon balm and passionflower to introduce other flavors and medical properties to your tea.

Cooking

When cooking, hops can be used like any other herb. The cones can be used to infuse sauces or marinades then be strained out. They can also be ground up to bring a bolder hop flavor to those same sauces, marinades, dressings, and many other dishes. The young shoots can also be harvested and used as a vegetable.

Try them as an asparagus alternative. New hop shoots are sometimes called wild asparagus. Pick them when they are a few inches long and still tender. Then, use them any way you’d use asparagus; steam them, chop them up and add them to your next dish.

Hops also make a great addition to salad dressings. Simply pour your favorite dressing in the blender with some hops and blend till smooth.

Crafting

Hop plants offer vibrant green leaves and delicate cones, which make them a nice fit for crafts.

If you end up with more hops than you need, you could make a hop wreath. First, you’ll need a form. You can either make the form by weaving willow limbs or grapevine or even the hop bines themselves if you have well-established hops making large bines. You could also build your form out of wire. Forms are also available for purchase from most craft stores.

There are countless ways to make a hop wreath. You can weave bines around the form, or cut several clusters of hops and then wire or glue them together on the wreath form or a mix of both. Your approach is uniquely your own!

You could also make hop soap because one of the main reasons hops became such an important part of early brewing was because of their antibacterial properties. The soap making how-tos online are a great place to start, but there are a few things you should know before adding in hops: the soap will likely not retain much of the hop aroma; dried hop cones can be pretty rough so you should consider grinding your cones as fine as possible before adding.

In conclusion, hops are extremely multi-faceted. You can explore all the possibilities over your next pint at Druthers Brewing Company.

Cheers!