“What’s the hoppiest beer you have?,” someone asked.

I have no idea. I don’t think anyone knows. We don’t keep track of hoppiness here, not in the sense of boasting about IBUs and alpha acid percentages. The brewers at Pilsner Urquell told me that their beer has 40 IBUs, but most brewers here wouldn’t be able to do much more than guess. It’s simply not an issue. Beer here is supposed to be good, that’s for sure. But it’s not necessarily supposed to be terribly hoppy.

However, high levels of hop bitterness and aroma seem to get a lot of attention among American beer fans, and the question got me thinking: what would it be like to take a perfectly great Czech pale lager and crank the hoppiness up a notch?

Thus my second experiment in beer hacking. The first involved dosing a Czech Baltic porter with Orval yeast dregs. In the comments for that story, Jake from Northern Table suggested “getting your hands on some hop pellets and dry hopping a few bottles.” But by that point, my dry-hopped Bernard pale lager experiment was already well underway.

For my dry-hopping hack, I didn’t use pellets. On my desk I had a single cone of Angus hop as a memento from my trip to the Budweiser Budvar hop room. So I cracked open a Bernard sváteční ležák bottle — chosen primarily because of its resealable swing-top cap — and just dropped the bud into the brew.

I resealed the bottle, covering the top with packing tape just in case, and put it in the fridge. Today — about a month later — I opened it along with an untreated bottle of Bernard sváteční ležák and poured two wine glasses to compare.

Here’s what didn’t happen. Contrary to my expectations, the dry-hopped bottle didn’t go flat: like any other swing-top bottle of Bernard, it opened with a reassuring pop. The two glasses in front of me have virtually identical amounts of carbonation and head retention.

Thankfully, it also didn’t sour or spoil. The aromas and overall flavor profiles are nearly the same. There is no trace of infection.

But what is different is just a whiff of more grassiness in the nose. And in the mouth, there’s a slight increase in the bitter, peppery notes. When you go back to the undoctored Bernard, you get much more of the grainy malt and sweet corn flavors. When you try the dry-hopped version again, you might think you’re tasting black pepper and pot resin. It’s actually not that much of a change, but if you focus you’ll probably notice the difference.

(However, there is one point at which you can’t help but notice the change. With apologies for any lack of decorousness, I have to say that the dry-hopped version burps far hoppier than the regular Bernard. How is it that a beer is only slightly different in the mouth, but wildly different upon belching? Good Lord, it’s like burping up the entire Budweiser Budvar hop room.)

As I drink the last sips, the differences are becoming more clear, probably due to the warmer temperatures. The dry-hopped bottle smells like high-grade weed; the unadulterated beer has yeast and bready notes instead. (Bernard sváteční ležák is a kvasnicové pivo, or yeast beer, which commonly has bread-like aromas.) There’s also much more citrus coming through with the dry-hopped version, as well as a touch of peppermint.

In the end, my single bottle of dry-hopped Bernard may in fact be the hoppiest beer in entire the Czech Republic. But does it matter?

That’s what some people don’t seem to get about hoppiness. To put it another way, my version certainly is hoppier. But I’m not at all convinced it’s any better.

Stan Hieronymus has a note on the first use of Žatecký chmel (Saaz hops) as a protected designation of origin. According to a press release from the Hop Growers Union of the Czech Republic, the 2007-2008 vintage is the first hop harvest to use the term that is now protected by European Union law, the first such protection for a hop varietal in the EU.

Of course, several types of beer have protected designation of origin status within the EU, the most important of which (in Czech terms) is “Budějovické pivo.” I’ve written before about an earlier push for a protected name status on Pilsner, which failed.

Just to provide a little historical background, I wanted to mention that there was already a push for the use of “Žatecký chmel” as the correct term for Saaz hops way back in 1922, a move which caused quite a bit of controversy at the time. In fact, if you squint just a little, the use of that term can be seen as one of the many small events that brought about World War II.

The picture above is a New York Times headline from April 23, 1922. According to the accompanying article, the new Czechoslovak government was “insisting” on a plan to “wipe out the ‘Saazer Hopfen,’ ‘Auschaer Hopfen’ &c. labels and replace them with ‘Zatecky chmel,’ ‘Ustecky chmel,’ &c.”

Such linguistic regulation might sound severe, but to put it in context, this was just four years after the newborn nation of Czechoslovakia had been liberated from the German-speaking control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After Czechoslovakia’s independence in 1918, there was hardly much chance that the use of the German language would be the Czechs and Slovaks’ first priority.

“The German Bohemian hop producers and traders are protesting vigorously, but apparently vainly, against the Government’s proposal,” the article notes. “They also point out that the German brewers, who have resumed buying in Bohemia since the anti-German export ban was lifted last November, will react unfavorably to any attack upon the German language.”

What was the attack? The Czechoslovak government at the time was proposing a two-year period when hops for export would be labeled first in Czech, then in German. After two years, the German label would disappear from the packages of those hops destined for French- and English-speaking countries. Those hops exported to Germany would still be labeled in Czech and German.

Not good enough, said the Germans.

“The protesting German producers profess to believe that even non-German consumers attach great weight to the German names of the hop districts,” the article continues.

German speakers in the Czech lands believed that this was just part of a larger plan to wipe out their language entirely. It might be hard to believe, but the very same article — an article that is ostensibly about hops and how they are called — continues with the following:

“An underhand move in the Czechoslovak Government’s campaign for the unification of the new republic through the gradual substitution of the Czech language for the German, Slovak, Magyar and Rumanian tongues spoken in various parts of the country is charged by the Prague German paper Bohemia, which avers, on what it calls good authority, that a secret order has been issued by the Government to the political district administrators to eliminate from the jury lists all persons unable to speak the national official language.”

All it would take now is for the German nation to get riled up on behalf of their cousins suffering behind the borders of Czechoslovakia. As in:

“In commenting bitterly upon this alleged order, the Frankfurter Zeitung of March 27 points out that if it becomes effective the inhabitants of such German-speaking towns as Reichenberg, Warnsdorf and Eger will be deprived of the basic right of a trial of their peers, as the great majority of the people there cannot speak Czech.”

And there you have it. Sixteen years after the publication of this article, Hitler would persuade the leaders of France and England to allow him to invade the border regions of Czechoslovakia, the so-called Sudetenland, in order to protect the rights of German speakers there. Then he would invade the rest of Bohemia and Moravia, then Poland.

At least partly over some hops and how they’re called. And eighty-six years later, the argument over how they’re called is still going on.

The global hop shortage has grabbed a lot of attention in the past few months, with no likelihood of the situation getting better anytime soon. At least one craft brewer with enough stock has offered to share his stash. Others are suggesting alternative beers made with spices, peppers or thistles. But the most natural solution might just be hemp beer, known as Hanfbier in German.

While hemp blossoms are unlikely to replace legendary hops like Hallertau, Spalt and Goldings in desirability, there are several similarities between the plants. Both are members of the cannabaceae family, as is marijuana. Many times I’ve noted grassy, pot-like scents while tasting beers with great aroma hops, and once in a hop yard in Žatec, aka Saaz, I was almost overcome by what I thought was the smell of hydroponic sativa. A couple of years ago I caught the same skunky scent while driving past a hemp farm in Southern Moravia. If hemp smells like marijuana and marijuana smells like hops, as long as there are no hops to be had, why not make hemp beer?

Several brewers in Europe — including at least two in the Czech Republic — already do.

The first Czech hemp beer with wide distribution was Hemp Valley Beer, which first appeared from the Nová Paka brewery about six years ago. When I tried it for Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic, I thought it was much like a good Pilsner-style lager, though rather short on the skunkiness.

Trying it again today, it seems even less punchy in the nose. The ingredients list hemp blossom extract after everything else, including refined hops and hop extract, so at best, the hemp is just a mild flavor booster. It’s pleasant but no big deal, and certainly not terribly pot-like, as Max Bahnson writes over at Pivní filosof.

The new Mary-Jo beer from the Bohemia Regent brewery is much more grassy. By the aroma, you might guess that after the first sip you’ll fire all of your guns at once and explode into space — it smells just like high-grade weed. In the mouth, it has gingery notes and is slightly prickly and funky, reminiscent of Chinese five-spice powder; I imagine it would go perfectly with a bowl of pad thai. It also includes hops and is dosed with hemp-flower extract before lagering.

Sadly, both of these come off less like craft brews than gimmick beverages for the legalize-it crowd, pushing the hemp over the beer through the choice of names and the numerous pot leaves on the labels. Bohemia Regent’s Mary-Jo goes so far as to include a pencil drawing of an comely elven lass bearing a bouquet of the demon weed, a truly remarkable combination of amateur draftsmanship, lecherous imagery and hackneyed fantasy motifs.

But don’t let that turn you off hemp beers: despite the dumb label and the even dumber name, Mary-Jo has a good flavor that many hop-heads will appreciate; it is certainly worth trying. With no quick end to the hop shortage in sight, hemp beers — whether produced with hemp blossoms completely replacing the hops, merely as an adjunct or through the addition of hemp extract in the tank — might be something more of us will be trying soon.