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it took 200 years for hopped beer to become the dominant drink among Englis=
h
brewers. Hildegard was writing at a time when hops were not the dominant
flavouring - she mentions "grusz" (gruit) as well as hops - but by 100 year=
s
after her death, that is about 1280, hops seem to have been top flavour
among German brewers: at least, this is when the Hansa towns in North
Germany began exporting hopped beer in quantity. It is a reasonable
assumption that hops' rise to dominance would have taken the same sort of
time in Germany as it did in England: resistance among those who held the
gruit monopoly might have delayed things, but even adding a century on,
giving 300 years from first brewing with hops as a preservative to hops'
dominance over gruit, takes us only back to around 980. So what was going o=
n
between 822, when we know the porter at Corvey was brewing using hops, and
this putative take-off date for hops as beer preservative? My personal
theory is that while brewers were using hops as a flavouring for a long
time, it took a couple of centuries, at least, before somebody got round to
boiling their wort with hops for sufficiently long to get, and notice, the
preserving effect that resulted. Please now shoot me down in flames.

Martyn Cornell