For centuries, hops has been the primary herb in beermaking, thanks to a 1516 German beer law that restricted the official ingredient list to hops, barley, and water. But in the Middle Ages, brewers looked to many different herbs to flavor their beer: yarrow, elder, comfrey, and more. One particularly popular brew was clary sage beer.
Hops flowers give beer a clean, bitter finish, but they also have a sedating quality that makes the drinker happy and sleepy. Clary sage raises the sedation level even higher. Just in a simple tea, clary sage is a calming and euphoria-inducing herb, but the effect is said to increase considerably when steeped in beer. Seventeenth-century Flemish botanist Matthias de l'Obel called clary ale a drink “fit to please drunkards” because of its heavily sedating effect.
