Did Morton Coutts think hops are evil?
Morton Coutts was New Zealand’s most influential brewer, but he had some strange ideas about hops.
I was at the Macs Brewery Bar in Wellington last week with a colleague. He had a Mac’s Gold and when it came to getting a second round, I suggested he try a Hopsmacker Hoprocker and tell me if he liked the difference.
He told me the Hoprocker had more flavour and was more bitter. “That’s hops, mate”, I said, “and beer isn’t beer if it doesn’t have hops”.
I didn’t know my friend was a Morton Coutts’ grandnephew. Morton invented the continuous fermentation technique used by industrial breweries around the world. You can think what you like about industrial brewing, but there’s no doubt that Morton’s invention has had a bigger impact on the brewing world that anything else to come out of New Zealand.
Morton died in 2004 at the age of 100. He was a creative inventor in many fields throughout his life, and when he was well into his 90s he still had free access to an experimental brewing lab with a full-time assistant.
My friend’s last memory of Morton was a discussion they had a few years before Morton died. His grandnephew asked what Morton was getting up to in his brew lab, and was told he was working on ways to make flavourful commercial beer with no hops in it. Why?
Morton apparently believed that hops are responsible for making beer drinkers violent and aggressive. Beer was made without hops before 1400, and Morton believed the historical records showed that early beer drinkers went home happy and full of the joys of the world.
Once hops were used, Morton said, beer drinkers became nasty drunks and beer became associated with violence. Morton told his grandnephew that the social costs of drinking should not be blamed entirely on alcohol, because the psychoactive effects of hops were also partly to blame, and he blamed hops’ botanical relationship to cannabis – they are both members of the Cannabaceae family.
Interesting theory. Of course, this was just as slapper juice RTDs were introduced so Morton didn’t get to witness violence triggered by alcohol, caffeine, sugar and artificial colourings. Hops do contain dimethylethylcarbinol, which produces similar effects to ethanol but is much more powerful. Its effects include inducing sleep, rather than starting fights.
For what it’s worth, I reckon I can handle my hops without getting too violent. But maybe Epic knew more that it was saying when it named its hoppiest offering ‘Armageddon’!
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©Martin Craig. No reproduction without permission.
Filed under: Beer Bars, Beer Makers, Gushing forth | Tagged: Epic, hops, Macs, Morton Coutts
Steve Plowman at Hallertau brewbar in west Auckland takes the opposite viewpoint to Morton. His view is that his hoppy beers leave people happy and loved-up, which is why he never needs to pay security, even when his bar gets really rammed. I tend to agree with him – if I’ve had a night on the hops I just want to man-hug everyone. Then I go home and snore horrendously (well, according to my wife I do).
By the way, the Macs beer you refer to is Hoprocker. Hopsmacker was a decent beer from the sadly lost Limburg brewery.
Thanks Martin – you’re quite right. I’ve corrected the entry
I worked with one of Morton’s decendents once. I think he had some brilliant ideas. He certainly had some which perhaps left the world of beer less characterful, as for hops causing violence? well I dont think that exactly ranks with his finest.
He was also working on making a beer that provided all the nutrition without ruining it with alcohol.
The same weekend that the Labour Party was holding it’s conference in Auckland Dominion Breweries ran full page ads in the Sunday Star Times under the headline “How to lose an Election.” The main image in the add is of past Labour Party leader Arnold Nordmeyer. The labour Party is referred to as “the killjoy Labour Government”. Nordmeyer is referred to as “an enemy of fun’ and “old gorse-pockets Nordmeyer”.
Morton Coutts
The bathroom in the Morton Mansion
cost more than a state house
The hero that these muddled adds are attempting to promote is Morton Coutts owner of Dominion Breweries. They try to present Coutts as the advocate for the working man, in fact Coutts lived in Morton’s Mansion which he had built next to his Waitemata brewery where the bathroom cost more that a state house.
Dave Shoemac, DB Export marketing manager, in a press release at the launch of this campaign of newspaper ads and associated five minute film describes Nordmeyer as a “‘puritanical bore’ who taxed the importation of the world’s best beers so heavily that no ordinary man could afford to drink them. After hearing news of the budget, the inventive Morton came up with a cunning plan to help average Kiwi beer drinkers who were outraged by the new tax,” Shoemack explains. “Morton quietly set about creating a beer that would not only avoid the import duty, but would also hold its own against the world’s best beers.
This is not correct. Coutts did not come up with his cunning plan after the tax on imported beers was introduced in 1959. It was collaborative research between Dominion Breweries and its largest competitor; New Zealand Breweries that led to the introduction of the Continuous Fermentation Process. This system was patented in 1956. The new process significantly reduced brewing times. Dominion breweries had been producing beer using this process for a year before the tax was introduced.
The newspaper ads describe Coutts as ‘visionary’. The real visionary was Arnold Nordmeyer. Working in Kurow in North Otago during the depression he had witnessed real hardship at an unemployed workers camp known as the Willows where unemployed families lived through freezing winters in tents and shacks made out of beaten out fuel cans. Nordmeyer would meet with the local schoolteacher Andrew Davidson and the town doctor Girvan McMillan and discuss solutions to the third world poverty they experienced at the Willows. It was at the doctor’s kitchen table that they wrote down the six simple points that were to become New Zealand’s future health system. By 1935 Nordmeyer was in Parliament where he was the architect of the 1938 social security act, which combined the introduction of a free-at-the-point-of-use health system with a comprehensive array of welfare benefits.
Shoemac and his confused storytellers simply ignore the fact that by taxing imported beer Nordmeyer was actually assisting the New Zealand owned brewery.
DB is no longer a New Zealand company. It is now owned by Singapore based Asia Pacific Breweries.
These ads are of course not really directed at the public. They are dog-whistle ads attempting to head off proposed changes in the drinking age or the price of alcohol, hence that strange headline ‘How to loose an election.’
The statement
“in fact Coutts lived in Morton’s Mansion which he had built next to his Waitemata brewery”
Is incorrect!
The house that he lived in next to the Waitemata Brewery was built by his father for the family.
Morton ended up in the house after the death of his father and all 7 of his brothers and sisters left the house through travel or marriage.
He ended up in the house out of default.
He then sold the house and moved to Remuera.
I do not believe that the statement “continuous fermentation technique used by industrial breweries around the world” is correct!
Can you name one brewery in the world now using continuous fermentation to brew good quality beer?
Nobody said anything about good beer. Has anyone used continuous fermentation to make good beer?
good quality beer is the problem with the system isnt it? There isnt one anywhere.
Just what is a good recipe to make Sugar-Free Low cal Dessert?
my turn chaps, i drink heather ale, and thistle ale and any thing else with no hops in it, hops are high in eostrogen and gives me a hangover, helps me put on weight from drinking ale or beer, theres lots of nice beer and ales with hops, dont get me wrong, but id rather drink hopless, i can say this cause i i was ignorant of the hops fact, but i now drink hopless, so i can comment on my experience, theres lots of good beers and ales round the world, look up hops and eostrogen on the internet and make your own mjnd up.
thanks
dylan swift a kiwi in scotland
my turn chaps, i drink heather ale, and thistle ale and any thing else with no hops in it, hops are high in eostrogen and gives me a hangover, helps me put on weight from drinking ale or beer, theres lots of nice beer and ales with hops, dont get me wrong, but id rather drink hopless, i can say this cause i i was ignorant of the hops fact, but i now drink hopless, so i can comment on my experience, theres lots of good beers and ales round the world, look up hops and eostrogen on the internet and make your own mjnd up.
thanks
dylan swift a kiwi in scotland
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