Hare Beer

Hare Beer

…Grey mist drifts up from the hollow
Over the bare and empty field.
“Look — the hare is brewing beer,”
people joke among themselves…

These lines from Uladzimir Karatkevich’s poem Заяц варыць піва have always left me with one simple question: why, of all things, is the hare brewing beer?

The poem was written in 1955. Later, Danuta Bichel-Zagnetova’s work Цвінтарэй mentions both centaury and the expression “заячы хмель” — “hare hop.”

And this is where the literary image begins to intersect unexpectedly with botany, vernacular plant names and the history of brewing.

What is “hare hop”?

There is no single botanical species called “hare hop”.

In different places, the name could be applied to different wild plants. Among the plants associated with it are crown vetch, field clover and centaury.

“Hare hop” is therefore better understood as a vernacular concept than as a strict botanical term.

The word “hare” appears in many folk plant names. Wood sorrel, for example, is sometimes known as “hare cabbage”. It also appears in Karatkevich’s poem.

The logic behind such names is easy to understand: there is the familiar plant used by people, and then there is its wild, woodland, “hare” counterpart.

The image almost builds itself.

There is hare cabbage.
There is hare hop.
So why should a hare not brew hare beer from it?

Things become much more interesting when we discover that beer made with one of these bitter herbs really does appear in historical accounts.

Dubrovno and the mysterious Zindelika

In 1807, the travel observations of Leyon Pierce Balthasar Freiherr von Campenhausen were published in Leipzig under the title Bemerkungen über Rußland…

This is the Campenhausen who lived from 1746 to 1807 and travelled through these lands.

At one point he discusses plants found in Belarus and mentions Gentiana Centaurium. He records its local name as Zindelika.

Then comes the sentence that started this whole investigation:

…from the latter plant, beer is brewed in Dubrovno that resembles porter…

In a modern Ukrainian edition of the travel notes, the editors identify the plant as Centaurium erythraea — common centaury.

So we are left with one remarkably simple and interesting fact: beer was brewed with centaury in Dubrovno.

But there is an important detail.

Campenhausen does not say that it was porter. He says only that the beer was similar to porter.

It is entirely possible that he was simply comparing an unfamiliar local drink with a type of strong beer already familiar to him.

The word Zindelika itself remains a mystery. Attempts have been made to compare it with words associated with vigour and vitality, which fits the old medicinal reputation of centaury rather well. But I would not consider the question settled: the origin of the local name still deserves separate study.

For this story, something else matters more — the combination of three things:

centaury, intense bitterness and beer.

William Coxe: strong beer on the same road

There is another episode that makes the story considerably more interesting.

Several decades before Campenhausen’s book appeared, the English historian and traveller William Coxe (1748–1828) passed through the same area.

In Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, published in London in 1784, he describes his journey through Orsha, Dubrovno and Lyady.

After passing through Dubrovno, the travellers reached Lyady and stayed at the post house.

There Coxe writes, in effect:

We were pleasantly surprised to find English strong beer even in such a remote place.

I am not convinced that this necessarily means “beer imported from England”.

Coxe writes English strong beer. That may indeed mean English beer. But it could also be an Englishman’s way of describing a drink of a familiar type — a strong beer that reminded him of beers he knew at home.

The text itself does not settle the question.

Then it gets even more interesting.

When Coxe describes the tables of the St Petersburg nobility, he mentions English beer and porter separately:

…I never tasted English beer and porter in greater perfection or abundance…

For Coxe himself, then, beer and porter were not the same thing.

And that raises an obvious question.

If Coxe encounters strong beer on this road, and Campenhausen later encounters a beer only resembling porter a few dozen kilometres away, was the Dubrovno drink really porter?

I do not think it necessarily was.

Porter, strong beer or something else?

English brewing had many kinds of strong beer.

One old term was stingo, which could refer to strong and often aged beer.

Later, similar territory would be occupied by strong ales that today might be placed somewhere near the tradition of old ale or the ancestors of barley wine.

But I do not want to turn a hypothesis into a neat modern beer style.

We do not have the recipe for the Dubrovno beer.

We do not know its original gravity.

We do not know its strength.

We do not know its colour.

We do not know how much malt or centaury went into it.

All we know is that it was unusual enough for Campenhausen to compare it with porter.

My own preferred interpretation is therefore simpler: it may have been a local strong beer with the pronounced bitterness of centaury, which reminded a European traveller of strong English beer he already knew.

What modern style name we might give it is a secondary question.

Centaury: a seriously bitter herb

Common centaury, Centaurium erythraea, belongs to the gentian family.

And the family name is rather appropriate.

It is an extremely bitter herb.

Its bitterness comes from a group of plant compounds including secoiridoid glycosides. Centaury has been used in traditional medicine for centuries, and its intense bitter profile made it a perfectly plausible botanical ingredient for alcoholic drinks.

In other words, putting it into beer is not a strange idea at all.

Before hops became an almost universal symbol of beer, brewers used a wide range of herbs.

Sometimes for aroma.

Sometimes for bitterness.

Sometimes because they were readily available.

And sometimes simply because the right plant grew nearby.

Centaury instead of hops

Centaury does appear among possible hop substitutes in older Polish brewing literature.

Nineteenth-century writers even made practical observations suggesting that its bitterness could be perceived as considerably stronger than that of hops.

This was not a modern IBU measurement or laboratory comparison. It was the practical judgement of brewers of the period.

But it explains quite well why someone looking to produce a bitter beer might be interested in the plant.

As hops became increasingly dominant, the need for such substitutes gradually declined.

Hops were simply more useful: they provided bitterness and aroma and also helped beer keep better.

Even so, alternatives continued to be used for a long time.

In Alfons Bukowski’s 1884 handbook on food examination, substitutes used to replace hops and malt are discussed openly:

Competition and the desire for profit are the principal reasons for inventing various substitutes intended to replace hops and malt in part.

Beer made with alternative bitter herbs is therefore a very real part of brewing history.

The reasons, however, varied. Sometimes it was tradition, sometimes locally available ingredients, sometimes the pursuit of an interesting flavour, and sometimes simply an attempt to reduce costs.

Why centaury is not simply “another hop”

Despite their bitterness, centaury and hops work very differently.

Centaury has its own distinctive botanical bitterness.

Hops provide α-acids, essential oils and the complex aromatic profile now closely associated with beer.

So centaury cannot simply be treated as “hop number two”.

It is better thought of as a different tool.

Extremely bitter.

Distinctive.

And, apparently, once quite suitable for brewing experiments.

It can still be done today

The story of herbs in beer did not end in the nineteenth century.

Modern home and craft brewers are once again experimenting with wormwood, juniper, heather, yarrow and many other plants.

Centaury has not disappeared either.

A good example is the Czech beer Black Hill, which was made with extracts from 33 different herbs. Centaury was among them.

Black Hill, of course, tells us nothing about the recipe once used in Dubrovno.

But it demonstrates one important point very clearly: brewing beer with centaury is a perfectly realistic idea, not merely a literary fantasy.

So what was the hare brewing?

And this is where my own version of the story begins.

I cannot prove that Karatkevich’s poem is connected with the beer once brewed in Dubrovno.

I cannot prove that “hare hop” in the world around him meant centaury specifically.

And there is certainly no basis for claiming an unbroken transmission of a recipe from Campenhausen’s time to Karatkevich.

But I would like to believe that the image did not emerge entirely from nowhere.

Karatkevich was born in Orsha.

Dubrovno is very close by.

And in an old travel account from that same area we really do find an extraordinary detail: beer was brewed from a local wild bitter herb — centaury.

A plant that, within vernacular tradition, could plausibly have been one of the plants known as “hare hop”.

Perhaps the memory of such a drink once survived in local stories, plant names, sayings or simply in the language itself.

Perhaps Karatkevich once heard an old expression.

Or perhaps it is all just a beautiful coincidence.

But I like to imagine that somewhere in the Orsha region there really once was a wild, bitter local beer — beer made with “hare hop”.

And many years later it unexpectedly resurfaced in a few poetic lines:

“Look — the hare is brewing beer…”

And if beer is brewed with hare hop, what else could we call it?

Hare Beer.