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Brewing without hops

indianbrewer

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Hello everybody!
My first post here. I'm new to the forum and to brewing, so I greatly appreciate any advice.

So I am from Delhi, India. And in recent times I've developed a taste for beer. Thus I've decided to attempt a home brew.
Not after a weeks and weeks of research on how to do that I face some problems. Mainly with the hops. Hops seem to only grow in a particular climate. That along with the fact that nobody home brews in India, it practically impossible for me to find hops. Suppliers that supply the breweries here only do it at industrial scales. So after a month of unsuccessfully trying to get my hand on hops I've been thinking if there is any way to substitute them.

Now I understand my beer with taste radically different from what I'm used to. But I'm willing to experiment. So could anybody here suggest me what can I use instead of the hops. Possibly a combination of herbs, maybe something similar to the old gruit. Any suggestions would be helpful.
 
indianbrewer said:
Hello everybody!
My first post here. I'm new to the forum and to brewing, so I greatly appreciate any advice.

So I am from Delhi, India. And in recent times I've developed a taste for beer. Thus I've decided to attempt a home brew.
Not after a weeks and weeks of research on how to do that I face some problems. Mainly with the hops. Hops seem to only grow in a particular climate. That along with the fact that nobody home brews in India, it practically impossible for me to find hops. Suppliers that supply the breweries here only do it at industrial scales. So after a month of unsuccessfully trying to get my hand on hops I've been thinking if there is any way to substitute them.

Now I understand my beer with taste radically different from what I'm used to. But I'm willing to experiment. So could anybody here suggest me what can I use instead of the hops. Possibly a combination of herbs, maybe something similar to the old gruit. Any suggestions would be helpful.

That is really unfortunate that you cannot get hops, you can make beer without them and it was done that way for thousands of years but is less than ideal and would require a lot of testing and seeing what works. Hops here in the US are everywhere because we grow a lot of them. You could probably find a company that would ship to you. Or even finding someone in the us willing to mail you some would probably be best.

Not using hops would have a impact on your beer because you wouldn't have bitterness most of the bittering in your beer comes from hops.
 
You could also try your hand at doing sour beers using fruit and lactobacillus/pediococcus. Sour beer use either no, or very little, hops.
 
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