Black henbane beer

10/20/2024

Hops were originally added to beer mainly as a stabilizer, to keep it from spoiling. Hops also add that pleasant bitter flavour that offsets the sweet malt flavour.

India Pale Ale, for example, is very bitter because of the extra hops added to help it keep from spoiling on the long ocean voyage from Britain to India.

Before the adoption of the Reinheitsgebot (the Bavarian beer purity law) in 1516 specifying the use of hops as the bitter stabilising agent, black henbane was one of the key ingredients used instead.

But black henbane, a weed, is both toxic and hallucinogenic. However, the beer was definitely not hallucinogenic.

Henbane is hallucinogenic because it contains anticholinergics. A familiar example of an anticholinergic is Benadryl (diphenhydramine), which is also an antihistamine. Benadryl can definitely make you hallucinate, if you take enough of it.

But all anticholinergics have unpleasant side effects at doses much lower than the hallucinogenic dose. A medium dose of anticholinergic will cause dry mouth, constipation, and increased heart rate. You need a much larger dose to begin hallucinating, and at that larger dose you are also likely to have blurry vision, a fever, impaired memory, and confusion. Death is possible.

Because even a medium dose is so unpleasant, the dose in beer was likely very small.

Henbane is also known as ‘stinking nightshade’ because it is so pungent, so a very small amount of henbane probably added significant flavor and aroma to the beer while adding only a small dose of anticholinergic.

In summary, that old school German beer was probably less hallucinogenic than Benadryl.

Tooling around the internet I did find one home brewer that makes henbane beer. He drinks it at 55 degrees C, and it tastes “like an earthy licorice”.

I suspect those Bavarian law makers knew what they were doing.