And if you drink beer without hops in it, and there are one or two examples of beer that still exist, it's an awful lot more like wine.

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Still, if you want character and complexity in your beer, you gotta have hops, and the hoppiness of beers can be approximately measured in International Bittering Units (IBUs).

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If a beer is too crazy with hops, it can distract from the milder flavors of the meal, so consider saving that Imperial IPA for another occasion.

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To help me separate the wheat from the hops, I called upon beer expert Matt Simpson.

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And hops were only introduced into beer around 1000-1200 AD.

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Consider a tasting where drinkers sample a beer with a particular characteristic (flavor from German hops, hop bitterness, smoked malt, amount of cherry juice, the options are endless) and rate the intensity of that characteristic.

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Nearby were sacks of mugwort, yarrow and bee balm, all of which Mr. Hunt uses to make a little-known style of beer called gruit, brewed in a centuries-old tradition, without hops.

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Ale is how beer was made for millennia--natural yeasts in the air attacked the blend of water, hops and malted barley and started the fermentation process.

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