In beer's long history, hops are a newcomer.

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People were drinking beer for around 8,000 years before they started using hops. While hops were used as herbs for hundreds of years prior, the first recorded history of their use in brewing beer dates back to 822 AD, in Picardy in Northern France. It wasn't for another 300 years that Germany caught on, and it took until the 13th century for hops to really be commonplace. Before people used hops to flavor beer, they used spices and herbs -- a mixture known as gruit. Hops were first grown in America in the early 1600s.