The Hop Water

Sarah and The Shrub discuss the 100% zero proof, 100% refreshing beverage: Hop Water. From the plant-parts behind it all (hops) to it's "f around and find out" origins in the home brewing community, and it's place in the wellness sector today, hop into spring with this one! Also, Sarah reflects on her connection between suburban stress / isolation and drinking. 

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hop_water#cite_note-Men's_Journal_28_June_2023-2

https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/7129-what-is-hop-water

https://www.fooddive.com/news/hop-water-nonalcoholic-beer-segment-wellness-trend/806828/

https://www.mensjournal.com/drink/is-hop-water-your-drink-of-the-future 

https://www.bevnet.com/news/2015/hopwater-launches-in-ohio-secures-distribution-through-cavalier-distributing/ 

https://www.h2ops.com/pages/our-story-mission?srsltid=AfmBOooPKHt1y7wv9xqA40l9T5N4M34RbzakAFTdhWNkG_0vUSCWVC6M 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBQFaHS5teY 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/1lvddkz/first_time_making_hop_water_and_it_turned_out/

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ig: @shrubbish_pod
email: shrubbishpodcast@gmail.com

While I want to bring levity to the table, this podcast does contain descriptions of substance abuse. If you or someone you know needs help, the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Lick your lips and settle in. Life's a bumpy ride. Daily fresh-baked whores clamoring to get inside. There's so much rubbish out there, it kinda makes you think. Maybe I'll stay in today and sip a special drink. Hi, I'm Sarah McAfee. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict, and this is Shrubbish. After a little break, um, had a little break, a little accidental break. Fully, fully meant to record this two weeks ago and have everything be on regular schedule, and then things happened. Um, I had a family incident, uh, health-related thing, um that we were expecting, but there were some unforeseen s side effects. I don't really know what what to say um exactly. Um, and I'm obviously not gonna air someone else's laundry on here. Um, but I basically I thought that I was gonna go hang out at my brother's house and help someone like chill for a week, and that was not what happened. There was a a lot of time in um the ICU. It was there were a lot of unknowns for a few days, things were really stressful and really scary, but ultimately everything's is good, uh, which is great news, and um no one is in the ICU anymore. So, yeah, so family's good, but I did I just I was like shrubbish is not a priority this week. So I had to put that off. And then I wasn't able to get back on track. So thanks for your patience and hopefully you enjoy this episode. I was kind of thinking about maybe doing root beer, but then there's I I feel like that might be a little complicated and annoying. Like root beer comes, I there's like it's from like the sassafast tree, but then there's some sort of like a weird thing about sassafast is was like marketed as like you can't drink it, like it's a carcinogen, or it's gonna eat you from the inside or something, or like don't put it in your food. And then some people are like, no, the sassafast tree is fine. And then I just feel like it, you know, wouldn't be fun. Um so I think we'll table root beer, but you know, I was thinking about what are other little drinkies that I enjoy, my little any any drink things, and then I remembered um a delightful treat that I've had uh on occasion. Um I don't make it a habit of buying it because I don't really typically buy a lot of the NA drinks that I have these days. Mostly I'm just drinking your your favorite tap water and um kombucha. So the homemade the booch from ma counter, my counter booch. But uh in the last couple summers, I've enjoyed a hop water on occasion. And hop water was introduced to me by a dear friend who I met through the program. Um she's a delight, and she uh has all sorts of fun ideas for for beverages, and she buys, she finds cool things at like weird discount stores and interesting, interesting places. And she, I'm pretty sure she's the one that mentioned hop water to me, and I was like, what the fuck is that? And she um I tried it, and it's really good. So I'm I'm a huge fan, and I figured might as well see what hop water is all about. And I'm glad I did because I learned a couple things. Basic it's actually quite simple, which we love, right? Um it's just carbonated water that's flavored with hops. Seltzers like your LaCroix, your whatever have you's. Um, Spindrift obviously has a little bit of juice in it, but a lot of those flavored seltzer waters are artificially flavored, which I'm thinking would also be an interesting avenue to explore is like how that artificial flavoring happens, but we didn't do that today. Um, and that's okay. But the the one thing about those seltzers, artificially flavored, and you can always kind of tell, right? Like, when does it ever taste like, uh, this is grape? No, it it's always kind of like something strange happening. It's something about that artificial quality kind of reminds me of like when you have an artificial sweetener. It's something about it makes me feel kind of like, meh, something weird happening like in my soft palate. I don't love it. So, but hop hop water is a little bit different because it's actually flavored with real hops. I am sure there's an artificial version out there, but generally speaking, from what I could see, it's flavored with the actual hop, um, either in oil form extracted from the hop or um the the hop cones are steeped l with like tea. One thing that was fun about this is that I've heard of hops a bunch, you know, especially when you're like a young alcoholic that doesn't quite know that they're an alcoholic and the craft beer scene is about, and you your boyfriend is really into craft beers and you're like, oh, I want happy, oh, it's happy, hop. So, you know, everyone's talking about the hops, and you act like, yeah, I know what that is, I'm cool too. Um, I truly never knew what the hops were. I knew what they looked like generally speaking. It's like this really brilliant, light green, beautiful color. Um, and they're small. But I, and you know, I've seen them kind of get put in the mash that is brew for beer, but I what are they? Um, well, this was the best part of this for me, is that I believe I've mentioned this on here, but one of my first paying voiceover jobs was recording this um book about herbs written by a man, and it was about like their names and where they're from, and it was basically like a textbook about herbs and different uses and stuff for them. And it was a lot of work, partly because I had to know the names, I didn't know how to pronounce all the herbs, right? And there was no pronunciation guide, so that was on me. I didn't think about that when I took the job. Um, but it was actually really I mean, I learned a lot of a lot of cool stuff. That's how I first learned about like adaptogens and things like that. So one of the guys that was really helpful in this book, and he doesn't know who I am, maybe I hope he's still alive. His name is Joe Hollis, I think it is, um, of Mountain Gardens, which is a mountain uh garden in North Carolina. This elderly gentleman, Joe, runs about in there and cares for the plants. And he has a little YouTube where he'll teach you about the individual plants. He'll be like, I'm Joe Hollis of Mountain Gardens, and this is Camellia sinensis, which is that's tea, right? That's black tea, I think. So he's not saying that. He maybe said that. But this one, I was like, I know Joe, I know Joe is gonna have some hops. Lo and behold, Bro has hops. So I went to his little YouTube, blah da-da, and it pops right up there. So he has a nice little three-minute video, which is in the show notes. If you would like to watch it, I highly recommend because Joe is badass. Um the hops that you use for all this stuff comes from a climbing perennial vine known as the humulus lupulus. And these cones that you use when you're making beer or when you're making hop water or anything that uses the hops, um, sort of look like miniature pine cones. They're called strobiles. Uh they're green, and they're like the fruit of the plant, except we there's no s there's no seeds. There's no germination, I think, because they only use females for like cultivation. Historically and theoretically, there's suggestion that hops um can be helpful with insomnia. Um, they might have like a calming effect, um, and they are part of the preservation of like part of the preservative quality of a beer is gonna come from the hops. Also, you can eat the greens of the humulus lupulus plant. They are, as Joe says, sort of like a gourmet vegetable. Uh, I think they go for a lot of money because there's not a l a ton of it, and you don't, he was saying you don't want to grow like a bunch of it because it'll like strangle itself or something. So, in order to get the most of from your crop, keep it light. Um, and that the sort of the most the tenderest green leaves on the ends of the vines are good for eating. So that's cool to know. The flavor notes of hops is generally going to be uh floral, citrusy, piney, like a like pine flavor, um, and then that of tropical fruits. That definitely comes forward in hop water. So the sort of notes that people were talking about and that I can attest to for hop water are that it is, I mean, it's very thirst-quenching. It's good it's a really delightful thing on a hot day, if you're or you're in the mood for something like juicy, people say. It's real like when I read juicy in, I think it was um the Test Kitchen article, like such a perfect description for it. It really is like, you know, when you are are zesting a lemon or you are squeezing out the lemon juice and you see that burst of the oils coming from the lemon rind and how juicy that kind that kind of feels, like the quality that you kind of just get from that in your bones. That's sort of what it feels like to drink a hop water. It's just full of this natural green kind of flavor, which is so different from other beverages of that type, right? So it has that quality of the hops, but it doesn't actually taste like beer because there's none of that other, there's no yeast, um, there's no malt, and so it's not it's there's no kind of like the the bready or the the um carbs kind of quality to it isn't there. It's just refreshing. The origins of hop water are kind of sweet. I think it's sort of just people fucking around and saying, like, oh, this is good, this is fun. Um it's been around for about 10 years, at least on the mainstream front. Uh some guy named Paul, Paul Tecker, uh started this is I think it's a cute name. It makes more sense if you read it, but um H2OPS, so it's like hops, but with a two in the middle, so it's like H2O and hops combined, H2Ops. Um, he's a California homebrewer and he was like just kind of fucking around and decided to basically just steep, I guess, his water with hops and kind of tweaked it a little bit and then brought it to like a homebrew's market kind of thing, and people really were into it. In 2015, there was a a hop-flavored soda was born out of Cincinnati that they also call hop water. But that does contain sugar, and the hop water that I know, and a big um sort of proponent for hop water is that it is a zero sugar thing. So I don't know that I really consider this hop water. To me, this is like a soda. This is a soda, but that's fine. Um BevNet states that it originated in Cincinnati in 2015. And I do like their description of what hop water is or these hop beverages. They say, quote, it's a new category of hopped beverages for people who love hops but do not want the alcohol, people who love soda but not the excessive sugar and calories, and for people who love tonic water but don't want the quinine. And it's true, it's it has all those kind of qualities, like the sort of like the bite of quine of tonic water is almost present. And then also the BevNet says that it can make a fantastic cocktail mixer. Now, I don't know about that was my first thought. Second thought was Michelada. Okay? So you could make a maybe like a more watery, refreshing Michelada versus like the sort of that sweet, heavy quality that comes with beer. You could maybe do that with um a hot water instead if you wanted to do an NA Michelada. Athletic Brewing Company, what everybody's, you know, a top-tier NA NA drink, NA brew, NA, what's happening to me, NA beer company. Um they created hop water also because they were just sort of fucking around and wanted they had the ingredients and wanted to like give something to their staff, I think. And then everybody loved it, and the employees all loved it so much so that they introduced it to their Connecticut tap room, um, where it also found success. And this is also where I learned that Athletic has a Connecticut tap room, which I think I need to take a road trip, because that sounds great. I did hit up Reddit to sort of see what they were saying about it. Um, and there was a really lovely thread. The Reddit people are so so nice. I love Reddit. The thread about hop water under, I think it was like a homebrewers subreddit or something. One guy's sort of um actually I you know, I guess I don't know if he's a guy, but one person's um recipe that they sort of put out there is that they uh added citric and lactic acid to their tap water to reduce pH. They also added calcium chloride. That I'm not quite sure why they did that, because I know nothing about homebrew, so couldn't tell you anything. Uh then they boiled the water, which I feel like is probably a pretty important step, let it cool. Then they added hops and carbonated it with a keg. I did ask, as come up some other people asked if you could do it with like a soda stream machine. Apparently, yes, you can. I also asked about the lowering of the pH because that came up all over the place, and apparently that is to help keep it um stay, stay fresher longer, and it'll be more predictable batch to batch if you have a lower consistent pH. So one of the sort of intriguing qualities of the brand is for a while not a lot of people knew what it was, and I still think it's not quite as well known, obviously, as NA Beer or Kombucha, those other things, but it's definitely got more of a place on the market. Many of the mainstream craft brews have their own line of hop water. Um you can find it at big box stores, which I won't name because I don't shop there, and other places. Um it's got a big now because it's more well known now, and this is a tricky issue because, okay, so I think it's really great that it was introduced within this sort of new understanding of drinking is down. Obviously, these companies want to stay relevant. Um, let's introduce hop water. Awesome, because that gives people an opportunity to drink something that's interesting that isn't alcohol. But because there's also this like push sort of now for quote unquote functional beverages. And I I saw I saw some a lot of advertisements for stuff like that. When I was in Ohio at this kind of health food store I was at, there was something that was like, oh, functional beverage, and I went over to read what it was. And it's just it's just a bev, it's not there's nothing really special about it. And when we did the episode about adaptogens, I might need to revisit that, but if memory serves these things like mushrooms and adaptogens, which you if you just say adaptogens as a whole, that's there are things that have adaptogenic qualities, but adaptogens aren't like an item you put off, take off the shelf and put in a drink. Something about this whole thing feels very misleading and a little like we were talking about with the straws episode, a little instead of greenwashy, like is there health washy? Is that a version of something that we're doing where it's like, oh, I say it has an adaptogen in it, and then I can charge$7, but really it's just carbonated water with some monk fruit extract, basically. You know? I did hear that maybe some hop water is also maybe putting some THC in it and trying to market it as a functional beverage itself, which I I guess you could if you could say that hops have potential like relaxation qualities, I guess you could say it's a functional beverage. Or it could just be hop water. Like, why did we need to make hard seltzer a thing? Why can't it just be seltzer and then if you want to add vodka to it, you can. Or why did we then make this the weirdest one to me is that we made hard seltzer booze-free again. That's just seltzer. We already have that. So I don't know what's happening in the industry. I'm not in it, I'm not involved, I'm doing my own thing, and I would like to try to make hop water. So we'll try to make some hop water at some point, maybe this summer, could be fun. I need to get hops. Which, oh my god, also, there's a million types of hops. When I was reading this Reddit, people were talking about, oh, like New London Brag and and South Florida 2 and Opium 7, and like there's all these names for those were all made up, but the there's uh these names for hops, like strains of it, like you would get strains of of cannabis or whatever. Um so that's kind of cool. There's a whole world out there that I know woefully little about. But maybe I'll get to pick up some hops and fuck around. They might be expensive. So maybe this isn't like a fuck around thing for for a podcast, but I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. I did want to just touch a little bit on some thoughts I had while I was in Ohio. Um I I'm not gonna talk about drunk driving on this podcast. That feels like a bad idea, but I will say, as a non-driver, right, because I live in Manhattan and we don't drive here, um, going to a space where driving is required, I am reminded why driving makes one want to drink. Um and coming home from a stressful day on the road, yelling at people for not using their blinkers, why you get home and you say, I want a beer. And obviously, just because you live somewhere where there's driving doesn't mean that you are an alcoholic or that you will become one. This is from my perspective. But that but it but it's interesting because I've mentioned, you know, going back to the East Village after some time and it took a little while to sort of walk around there and not feel the demons. Um now they're just mild ghosts on occasion that pop out to say hello. I haven't spent a lot of time engaging in a like leave the house in the morning, have a full day, come back home, stress car thing since I've been sober because I got sober here. So that was an interesting thing to remember. Oh, right, this is a whole other side of things that I'd kind of forgotten because I had a whole drinking career before I moved to the city. It was just, it looked very, very different. So that was an interesting thing to reflect on. The other side of it, though, that I was thinking was in these places, which is much of America, lest we forget, where people are driving to and fro in their own car, and then they go home to their house with like a small set of people, or just themselves, and then go do it again the next day. There's a lot of isolation in that that I don't think I would do well in that environment either, um, if I was if I was struggling at this point with with my addiction. Um I think that's one of the things that made it so easy to get so far down the rabbit hole while I was in college, because I was in college in this small town and, you know, I was having a little bit of some social problems because of my alcohol use. Um and it just made it easier to isolate. Like I could drive myself to the liquor store, I could come home and drink alone, I could it was easy to hide it from people because you're i everything was so isolating. Now, it's also easy, it can be easy to be isolating here in New York, but you're just so s I'm so surrounded by so many people. You know, the loneliness aspect of it is such a big part for me. Um, and I've heard that from other people too. And the community aspect is such a huge, strong part of getting sober that to me getting sober in a place that isn't like this sounds really scary. And I that wasn't something that I'd ever thought about. I think I I think I take this for granted, is maybe kind of what I'm coming down to is I've been, I've I take this environment for granted that I've was able to get sober so quickly and find this secular community so quickly and with such ease. And then even though it was during COVID, like we met each other, you know, and and now they're like my best friends, and I see them every week, and sometimes more than that, because we socialize outside of the meetings, and it's so easy to find meetings, and it's so easy to do stuff with other people that are sober. Um, there's just such access to it, and I'm, you know, surrounded by humans all the time. And so the extrovert in me really appreciates that. I think if I had to transition this to a different type of place, that really honestly scares the shit out of me. The other thing that scared the shit out of me was um how delicate and fragile our bodies are. I can't undo the things I've done. And I'm very at peace with that. I've, you know, put myself in harm's way as far as um substances are concerned. My organs uh have not gotten the best treatment, and I can't change the past, but I can focus on now and the future because mobility and cognition and all that sort of stuff that again I I take for granted, like on the day, day to day, it's a precious, beautiful thing. So that was a nice thing to be reminded of. So yeah, I guess to not get too soapboxy. Or sappy drippy drappy great attitude kind of stuff. Um I'm just feeling after everything that happened the last couple weeks, very grateful for a body that works and for community. So community shout-out, human interaction shout-out, um and taking care of this thing that gets us around and helps us think. All right. You heard it here first, kids. I think I've mentioned this on the last several episodes, how it would be smart to do something with figs. And then I was at the store and I saw figs and I was like, Sarah, just buy the fucking figs. Make your fucking shrub already, kid. And then I bought them and I ate them immediately. I ate all of them in like 12 hours because I can't be stopped. I went and I s sought out more figs. I said, I will find you. And I did. And so there were two boxes of figs left at the store, and I took one, the best looking one, brought it home. I ate some, but then I went ahead and made like a like a sh the uh fig syrup. I basically I reduced them with water and sugar because at first it was just the sugar, and I was like, oh, these bad boys don't have enough juice in them to reduce like this. So I made a little concoction and then added that to sugar and vinegar and voila, the shrub. So I mean it it was a stunning process to watch because the figs themselves, right, that dark purple color, and then so many colors on the inside, kind of like green around the peel, and then the white layer, and then that pretty pink center where the wasps have their moment. And then it reduced to this, you know, they turned this rosy, pretty, gorgeous red-pink color. Awesome. And then the the vinegar, I think, the acidity of that maybe just brought that out even more because when I took the photograph just now, it was a stunning moment. So really excited about this. The little bits that I licked from the pan when I made my little sweet, basically sugar, uh, basically fig candy situation were delightful. Um so I think this will be really good. And it, you know, it tasted of it tasted of fig. So uh here we go. Bottoms up chew a spring drink. I did do a smell test. I just did it at the same time. Um the smell is very fresh. It does it it smells very much of fig. Oh, you know what? This is actually really interesting. So a friend of mine, Teresa, really loves fig uh she has a like a fig tree that she really loves, and she uh has fig perfumes that she really loves. And one of my favorite perfumes also has notes of of fig. And I never, I was never like, I was like, what is that? I don't understand, I don't feel like figs have a smell. But they do, and I'm recognizing it right now because I was like, oh, what is that? What is that note that I'm sensing? It's the note of fig. It's green, it's bright, and um it's very fresh. It's very fresh smelling. I think what I probably could have done is added a little bit more of the shrub to this concoction. I think it's a little light on the flavor. Um but it's it's good, it's sweet. I think I think it could use a little bit more. I also think I could have maybe let it sit for a little bit longer. Let me try it again. Yeah, the first notes are very are very much aesthetic. It's very vinegar forward. Um, it's not too sweet, which is good. The fig doesn't really come in until later. This is a light option. I would say this is this kind of reminds me of the lychee one, where it's it's got a it's light and would be probably good with a meal. Um, maybe like a cheese and crackers. This would be nice with like a cheese and crackers or um with a salad, some sort of like a a a springy, early summer kind of a moment would be nice. So which is makes sense because that's when figs are coming about. Um yeah, this is good. This is good. It's it's it's very fresh, very green, very fig. Also, there's different kinds of figs, right? Or they're just black mission figs. I bought black mission figs, and then I bought figs that just had figs. So I can't tell you about that. But anyway, that's that. Um okay, we're back on track. Uh got some topics and some fruits lined up for future shrubs. So thanks so much for your patience on this episode. It's been nice to chat again and be back here in the booth. Um we'll check back in in a couple weeks. And in the meantime, don't let the shrubbish get you down. Okay? Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for tuning in to Shrubbish. Of course, I wouldn't be able to do this alone. Research references are available in the show notes, and that spunky show art and design is by the incredibly talented Alex Crawford. If you're looking to connect, we're on Instagram at Shrubbish underscore pod, or you can send an email to shrubbishpodcast at gmail.com.