Corbie Abbey Statutes Link Hops to Brewing

In 822, Abbot Adalhard issued statutes regulating the organization and obligations of the Benedictine Abbey of Corbie in Picardy. The rules required tenants to gather hops and deliver them together with firewood to the abbey’s brewery, providing one of the earliest surviving written connections between hops and beer production in medieval Europe. The statutes do not describe a brewing recipe or explain precisely how the hops were used, and the plants were probably gathered wild rather than cultivated in dedicated hop gardens. The Corbie evidence is nevertheless important because it places hops within the operation of a documented Carolingian brewery centuries before hopped beer became dominant across northern Europe.