Hops were then grown as far north as Aberdeen, near breweries for convenience of infrastructure.
Consequently many words used in the hop industry derive from the Dutch language. Hops used in England were imported from France, Holland and Germany and were subject to import duty it was not until 1524 that hops were first grown in the southeast of England ( Kent), when they were introduced as an agricultural crop by Dutch farmers. For this reason the Protestants preferred hopped beer. There was no tax on hops to be paid to the Catholic church, unlike on gruit. In Germany, using hops was also a religious and political choice in the early 16th century. In 1471, Norwich, England, banned use of the plant in the brewing of ale ("beer" was the name for fermented malt liquors bittered with hops only in recent times are the words often used as synonyms). In Britain, hopped beer was first imported from Holland around 1400, yet hops were condemned as late as 1519 as a "wicked and pernicious weed". Whichever was taxed made the brewer then quickly switch to the other. Gruit was used when the nobility levied taxes on hops. Not until the 13th century did hops begin to start threatening the use of gruit for flavouring. However, in a will of Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne, hop gardens were left to the Cloister of Saint-Denis in 768. The first documented hop cultivation was in 736, in the Hallertau region of present-day Germany, although the first mention of the use of hops in brewing in that country was 1079. Historically, traditional herb combinations for beers were believed to have been abandoned when beers made with hops were noticed to be less prone to spoilage. Hops are also used in brewing for their antibacterial effect over less desirable microorganisms and for purported benefits including balancing the sweetness of the malt with bitterness and a variety of flavours and aromas. Early documents include mention of a hop garden in the will of Charlemagne's father, Pepin III. Before this period, brewers used a " gruit", composed of a wide variety of bitter herbs and flowers, including dandelion, Burdock root, marigold, horehound (the old German name for horehound, Berghopfen, means "mountain hops"), ground ivy, and heather. The first documented use of hops in beer is from the 9th century, though Hildegard of Bingen, 300 years later, is often cited as the earliest documented source. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types used for particular styles of beer. The hop plant is a vigorous, climbing, herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden (nomenclature in the South of England), or hop yard (in the West Country and United States) when grown commercially. The hops plants have separate female and male plants, and only female plants are used for commercial production.
Hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to which, in addition to bitterness, they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas. Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant Humulus lupulus, a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants.