All hail the righteous hop!

For many years, smaller breweries have been experimenting with megahopped beers. Everyone from Rogue to Dogfish Head to Troeg's to Victory to Bell's to Stone to (just recently) Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams has their version of a double or "Imperial" Imperial Pale Ale. These beers often have amusing names. Clipper City of Baltimore calls its relatively tame rendition "Loose Cannon Hop Cubed." Bell's biggie goes by "Hopslam." Stone's monster hopper is called "Ruination," mostly because the bitterness inherent in that brew strips enamel from the teeth on contact.

But the little guys aren't the only ones digging deep into the hop well. The big boys have taken to beefing up their hops creds, if not the actual hop content of their beers.

For some time, Anheuser-Busch has been running ads showing Augie Busch the not-quite-youngest wandering around Germany admiring towering hop vines. The ads explain that, in fact, there are hops in Budweiser. And that A-B uses the best hops in the world.

The claim of quality hops is pretty credible, I'd say, even if a case of Budweiser has less than half the hop content of one twelve-ounce bottle of Ruination.

Somewhat stranger is a more recent ad featuring a German guy (who may or may not be described as a brewmaster; I can't remember) going off on the quality of hops that go into the new Michelob dunkelweizen.

This is all well and good. Except for one thing: hops are not particularly important to the taste of a dunkelweizen. For that particular style, the wheat malt is the most important element of the taste, and the interaction of that wheat malt with a particular strain of yeast produces some of the most striking flavors in a wheat beer. You do want some hops--hops are a great natural preservative, which is why they became so important to beer production more than 400 years ago. But you can use a small amount of hops and come up with a decent dunkel. Nonetheless, I give the A-B folks props for trying to sell their beer on the basis of taste rather than the bra size of the models holding the bottles.

Miller (or, as it is now, SAB Miller) has been trying to do the same thing with Miller Lite. Its new campaign describes Lite as "Triple Hop Brewed." I first saw these ads while watching a bit of NCAA action this week, and I about fell out of my chair. I mean, it's one thing to go on and on about hops while flogging a virtually hopless beer--that's what A-B does with Bud. But the disingenuousness of the Lite campaign is staggering.

For starters, Miller refers to its "triple hop" process as "unique." This may be technically true, as the timing of the hop additions might be slightly different than that of other brewers. But the notion of dropping hops in beer three times during brewing is old hat. Almost every homebrew recipe refers to three types of hops: bittering, flavor and aroma.

You put the bittering hops in first. They stay for the entire brew. You add the flavoring hops some time after the midway point of the brew, and you add the aroma hops right before you take the brew off the boil. You can use different hops for each step, or you can use the same. The timing of the second and third hop additions can vary. Doesn't matter. "Triple hopping" is hardly unique.

Dogfish Head has invented a "continuously hopped" system, which dribbles hops into the wort for the entire span of the brew. I don't know if that's what makes their beers so good, but in any case, that's a truly unique process. In fact, I think it's patented.

So this Lite "Triple Hopping" isn't exactly groundbreaking. But what's really bizarre is the way Miller describes the steps in its process. The first hopping is for "flavor and aroma." The second is for "balance," and the third is to "lock in great taste."

The first step in the advertised Lite process (the "flavor and aroma" bit) would sound pretty reasonable to most beer drinkers. After all, most folks know that hops do, in fact, provide flavor and aroma. The second step ("balance") is a bit arcane, despite a number of Budweiser ads that address this very issue. Brewers refer to the balance between the bitterness of the hops and the sweetness of the malt. I'd say Miller Lite is well balanced--it has little in the way of hops or barley malt. Corn is its main ingredient, and as a light beer, there's not even much of that. But a second step for the purpose of "balance?" Um, okay. If you insist.

The third step is the one that almost made me fall off the couch. Adding hops to "lock in great taste?" That just smacks of marketing bullshit. Are hops a padlock? A key? A gate? "Lock in" has a nice ring to it, but it doesn't make sense in this context. If the first step is for flavor, how can the third step be a flavoring step, too? Repetition can be good in an ad campaign, but this seems a bit much.

Whatever. Much like I said when talking about A-B, I'm glad Lite is trying to compete on the basis of flavor rather than on the notoriety of aging sports heroes, even if its new campaign is almost bizarrely inaccurate.

As in any business, the smaller brewers are leading the way on the hops trend. I just wish the big brewers would actually put more hops in their beer, rather than merely feature hops as a marketing tool.

All hail the righteous hop, indeed.

If he had had his way, Jon Worley would have named his first son Hops. Max is quite pleased his dad didn't win that one.