Hop Education

Hi,

I have been at this hobby for about 9 months, and one thing that I have discovered is that I love hops as much as my own mother. But I have yet to be able to distinguish the different hop varieties and each of their individual flavors. I plan on turning myself into a hop pro by brewing 5 or 6 IPAs, each using only a single hop variety. I was wondering what your favorite hops are and which ones you recommend using.

I am thinking that I should include Cascade, Saaz and Amarillo. Thoughts?

I was also toying with the idea of using the same bittering hop for all the brews, and just use a single and different hop for flavor and aroma (in large quantities) in each. Do you think that would that be a better way to go about doing things? If so, what bittering hop would you use?

As with all good higher educational programs, this has the potential to take a long time. I would not be too opposed if I need to brew many more beers than I expected and turn this into a masters in hops.

My housemate is also a hop lover. For some strange reason he really supports this idea...

Do a search on SMaSH brewing: Single Malt and Single Hop. Do the same base malt (2-row) for all of the brews, and then just vary the hop. You'll learn TONS about the hop variety, what it does for bitterness, flavor, and aroma.

I like this idea. I was wondering the same thing about hop education. Would there be a way to educate using mass produced IPA's. Any recomendations? This would seem a cheaper way to educate and discover which varieties you like the best.

I hadn't even thought about commercial brews. I wanted to attack this head on, but that sounds like a much cheaper alternative. Where to start? Are there specific commercial brews that I could use as example of hop varieties or should I brew it myself?

For what its worth, i think founder's makes an all centennial IPA, and Weyerbacher has a double Simcoe IPA

Shipyard Brewing makes an all Fuggle IPA

http://www.shipyard.com/taste/

Select the I P A (strange web setup)

It was a good beer and helped to know Fuggle better after a 6pack

i think Stone uses Chinhook. I know Seirra Nevada anervirsry ale uses Cascade. I just made an IPA with Summit for bittering, Cascade for the rest of the boil and Amerillo for the dry hopping/drinking it right now and its pretty damn good

I cannot imagine what a Saaz IPA would taste like. Also, I think you'd need quite a lot of Saaz in order to pull that off.

Have you thought about separating 6 gal of mash into 3 smaller kettles and doing 2 gallon batches. You could get 3 varieties of hops in the same batch. Or more depending on how you broke it down. Of course minding multiple kettles could prove a logistical nightmare.

I did this with pale ales. Mainly because I didn't want bitterness to overpower subtle hop flavor and aroma. Find a neutral flavor recipe you like and is inexpensive to brew. I used BM's Centennial Blonde. Then swap out only late addition hops being careful to keep the same IBU. Make all of your late addition the same variety so flavor and aroma don't get muddled between variety. Once you have discovered some hops you like you can mix them up or increase amounts to make hop bombs. Some of my favs are cascade, amarillo, summit, simcoe, German tett and Czeck saaz. I really like summit but be warned use sparingly, at 18.5 AA it is easy to over use it.

sithspitt said:

Amerillo for the dry hopping/drinking

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When I first read that, I thought you meant you dry hopped, and added hops when drinking. There's an interesting concept: pour the beer over hops, or a hop tea bag. Hmmmm...

klyph said:

When I first read that, I thought you meant you dry hopped, and added hops when drinking. There's an interesting concept: pour the beer over hops, or a hop tea bag. Hmmmm...

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make yourself a hop back

or serve through a randal.

I just researched both hopback and randal. I have so much to learn.

Mikeller has a few single hop IPA's - http://www.mikkeller.dk/index.php?id=6&land=1 (check out the beers)

Nugget, Nelson Sauvin, Cascade, Warrior, Simcoe...