Using Summit hops?

Does anyone have experience with summit hops? Going for an IPA and the brew shop is out of Simcoe and he suggested using Summit? I thought I'd use it early and at 30 minutes then go with cascade for an aroma addition then dry hop with both summit and cascade. Figured this will come out very citrusy and awesome!

summit is not like simcoe but it can be very good. i've detected an onion smell in the fresh hops and the same smell in the finished beer. some people do not like that but it didn't bother me. give mosaic a try for a simcoe substitute, it's a daughter to simcoe.

wyobrewer1 said:

Does anyone have experience with summit hops? Going for an IPA and the brew shop is out of Simcoe and he suggested using Summit? I thought I'd use it early and at 30 minutes then go with cascade for an aroma addition then dry hop with both summit and cascade. Figured this will come out very citrusy and awesome!

Click to expand...

It will come out awesome. You can use summit for bittering as well. I found that Summit/Citra or Summit/Centennial was very good. Summit/Cascade should be a good combo.

HeavyKettleBrewing said:

It will come out awesome. You can use summit for bittering as well. I found that Summit/Citra or Summit/Centennial was very good. Summit/Cascade should be a good combo.

Click to expand...

Exactly...I find that summit slips its way into many of my recipes...just did a summit/cascade, dry hopping now and I'll bottle it this weekend. I don't get the onion smell/taste. Much more like tangerine.

eastoak said:

summit is not like simcoe but it can be very good. i've detected an onion smell in the fresh hops and the same smell in the finished beer. some people do not like that but it didn't bother me. give mosaic a try for a simcoe substitute, it's a daughter to simcoe.

Click to expand...

Yeah I couldn't find summit as a sub for Simcoe listed anywhere. More like a super cascade. Hopefully it ends up with a good grapefruit aroma.

Ninkasi Tricerahops is one of my favorite commercial IIPAs and it uses a decent amount of Summit. So does Green Flash Imperial IPA, another favorite of mine. I mainly detect dank resiny tangerine citrus from both of these beers, which use the majority of Summit early on and in the dryhop. For a replacement, Apollo or Columbus would probably be the most similar to Summit.

Some people will tell you that the supposed oniony character only occurs when the grower leaves Summit on the bines for too long. But I believe there is a fallacy in this claim.

Other Summit heavy beers like Devil Dancer taste straight up oniony every year. I wouldn't say that Founders is specifically requesting from the grower that their allotted portion of Summit be left on the bines for longer. Rather, Founders is just using way more Summit and implementing it via a vastly different hop schedule with less complementary hop combos... The same goes for Oskar Blues Gubna. Both of these beers taste oniony, yet all four hoppy ales mentioned in my post focus quite a bit on Summit hops.

My theory is that Summit will yield oniony traits if you overdo it in the 30-5 minute kettle boil range and don't balance it out with fruity hops like Amarillo or Citra. The effects might be magnified if you also incorporate this schedule with a substantial amount of Summit for a long, 10-14 day dryhop.

I just used it in an IPA to bitter and 50/50 for late additions/dry hop with Cascade. It seems to have more of an orange/tangerine citrus flavor and is more round than Cascade. I like it, but might use it in the future at 1/2 ratio to cascade.

Cool...

I have about a pound of it and have been trying to figure out what ti do with it...

It came wih about 30 pounds of hops I got from a guy who was selling all his brewing equipment.

Just bottled my IPA this morning. I used equal parts summit and cascade with 60 and 30 min summit additions and 30 and 0 minute cascade. Then dry hopped with 2 to 1 ratio cascade to summit. I've got to say....it's the most awful smelling/tasting beer I've ever had. Smells like pure onion and tastes just as bad. Basically not even worth bottling. It was soooo bad.

wyobrewer1 said:

Just bottled my IPA this morning. I used equal parts summit and cascade with 60 and 30 min summit additions and 30 and 0 minute cascade. Then dry hopped with 2 to 1 ratio cascade to summit. I've got to say....it's the most awful smelling/tasting beer I've ever had. Smells like pure onion and tastes just as bad. Basically not even worth bottling. It was soooo bad.

Click to expand...

What a shame, but something else must be going on there. I just bottled a 50/50 split of the same combo about 3 weeks ago and had no unpleasant flavors, certainly not onion

Some people get onion/garlic from summit; some don't.

I've had both wonderful tangerine and awful onion from summit (with differenct batches of summit), and it's been reported that it may be due to picking them past its prime.

I've encountered both tangerine and onion in separate beers with high Summit use. I don't think one group of people always get tangerine while the other group always gets onion. It's not a palate issue like we see with cilantro where you either always sense floral citrus or bitter soap. I think bobbrews had it right earlier in this thread when he mentioned the cause may be due to way that Summit is used in a recipe, how much of it is used, and dryhop length.

EyePeeA said:

I've encountered both tangerine and onion in separate beers with high Summit use. I don't think one group of people always get tangerine while the other group always gets onion. It's not a palate issue like we see with cilantro where you either always sense floral citrus or bitter soap. I think bobbrews had it right earlier in this thread when he mentioned the cause may be due to way that Summit is used in a recipe, how much of it is used, and dryhop length.

Click to expand...

My experience indicates it is highly variable by batch... whether that be due to growing season, the hop yard (or portion of the yard it came from), or when it is harvested I do not know.

I can only comment that across several pounds of it I have used, the variability is related to the batch, not necessarily how it is used in the brewday (I've had a couple Summit-based recipes that I stick to, so I have an apples-to-apples comparison on the recipe usage vs batch comparison)

Posted this in another Summit threads, but might be of interest here too. I posed the onion/garlic question to Hopunion and got this response.

I contacted one of our owners who grows this particular variety to get more insight into your question. Regardless if Summit™ is organic or not organic, if this variety is picked at the optimal time, it will have tangerine characteristics. The onion and garlic notes come through if the hops are picked later and the oils are overdone. Growers try to the best of their ability to schedule the different hops to be harvested at the optimal times and it can be tricky.


Best regards,
Jennifer Stevens
Director of Procurement
Hopunion LLC.

Click to expand...

The onion notes seem to vary from person to person, same with the Simcoe cat pee thing. Some people will never smell or taste it from what I can tell.

I had an IPA from a brewpub a couple months back that was really pleasant until you got that tiny, mild onion note in the finish. I think it was an all Michigan barley, all Michigan hopped beer. I assumed it had Summit in it. I've also strayed away from summit for that very reason.

I have yet to come across any onion or garlic flavor or aroma from beers with Summit, commercial or homebrew. I don't know if I just don't perceive that flavor or if I have been fortunate enough to avoid it. Either way I love Summit hops and use them in my recipes quite often. Like others have said, they are not a substitute for Simcoe, but pair well with it or other citrusy hops.

I left a sample of it for my wife to smell and taste and she was getting a citrus note from the cascade but not much onion so that leads me to believe that it could vary from person to person.

It does not vary from person to person... It varies from the ability to know and use your god damned palate.

Blindfold someone and give them alfredo, pesto, peanut butter, tomato, lemon, etc. A large sample of people will all give you about 10 different answers with 33% of them being correct.

Devil Dancer taste straight up oniony every single damn year. It is a great IIPA, but I wouldn't say that Founders is specifically requesting from the grower that their allotted portion of Summit be left on the bines for longer. That is ridiculous. It is not about length of harvest. It's about how the ingredient is used. This example is a ridiculous beer that focuses on overabundance of ingredients. If i throw 1/4 cup of salt into something that normally recommends 1/16 cup... then you should be able to taste it.

Bob....sounds like you're kind of a *****er.

Well I just cracked my first bottle last night and it was simply amazing, fruity and no onion.

bobbrews said:

It does not vary from person to person... It varies from the ability to know and use your god damned palate.

Click to expand...

You sound like my mom growing up, giving me $hit for not learning my colors. Turned out I'm color blind.

Never had Devil Dancer, but have gone through a few pounds of Summit and haven't made a straight up oniony beer yet. Guess I should learn how to use my damned palate. After all why would I believe the people working in the industry when I have bob to get my expert advice from?

AnOldUR... that wasn't directed at you, but I did get a laugh out of your response.

I work with new chefs quite a bit because I am in charge of training them. This includes testing their palates. You'd be surprised how many of them cannot tell strawberries from raspberries, basil from mint, chicken from pork. And these are culinary graduates!!

In my experience, these mistakes are not genetical defects whereupon one person truly tastes something different from another. The mistake lies with their own undeveloped palates. Hence, this is not equatable to being colorblind.

bobbrews said:

It does not vary from person to person... It varies from the ability to know and use your god damned palate.

Blindfold someone and give them alfredo, pesto, peanut butter, tomato, lemon, etc. A large sample of people will all give you about 10 different answers with 33% of them being correct.

Devil Dancer taste straight up oniony every single damn year. It is a great IIPA, but I wouldn't say that Founders is specifically requesting from the grower that their allotted portion of Summit be left on the bines for longer. That is ridiculous. It is not about length of harvest. It's about how the ingredient is used. This example is a ridiculous beer that focuses on overabundance of ingredients. If i throw 1/4 cup of salt into something that normally recommends 1/16 cup... then you should be able to taste it.

Click to expand...

You're right I probably overused the summit. But regardless it still has different flavor profiles. Salt, whether used in a 1/6 cup or a 1/4 cup will still taste salty.

things just taste different from person to person i.e. Austin Powers drinking a cup of fat bastards ****....."tastes a bit nut-tay." He didn't say it actually TASTED like ****. Just perceived nut flavors.

It has different flavor profiles depending on how you use it in a recipe. Like a pinch of salt in a dessert vs. several large pinches on a steak. Try the reverse and see how that affects the final dish.

There is always the potential in Summit to release either tangerine or onion. The flavor profile of the actual ingredient does not vary depending on the harvest or season. I know this because of Devil Dancer's onionyness every year as well as my own use of Summit in homebrews, whereupon the same bag of Summit released different flavors in three different IPAs. Sometimes I got more onion, sometimes more citrus. Perhaps we should compare our recipes that were either citrusy vs. oniony in order to isolate the procedure that is accentuating the onionyness.

wyobrewer1 said:

I left a sample of it for my wife to smell and taste and she was getting a citrus note from the cascade but not much onion so that leads me to believe that it could vary from person to person.

Click to expand...

To truly isolate this, a single hop Summit beer would be better since Summit & Cascade can both be citrusy. Unfortunately, I rarely ever brew single hop IPAs so maybe others can chime in with their lone use of Summit.

bobbrews said:

To truly isolate this, a single hop Summit beer would be better since Summit & Cascade can both be citrusy. Unfortunately, I rarely ever brew single hop IPAs so maybe others can chime in with their lone use of Summit.

Click to expand...

I've done single hop summit ales, a few of my best and most well received where summit only. Even one of my friends that doesn't drink much, took a whiff, a sip and then asked if I added tangerines to this

As a first gen Italian, all I can say is embrace the onion and garlic. If Summit wasn't so much more expensive than garlic, I would buy a summit press for my kitchen.

I did a summit and 2 row smash last year and it tasted like pure tangerine. People asked me what fruit I out in the beer to make it taste like that! I believe I even dry hopped with summit and got zero onion.