so i learned about hops today.

so i brewed my first batch two days ago. just a little one-gallon batch to get a feel for things before i start making big purchases and big mistakes. extra pale lme, some hops... based off some information i found on the internets... everything went fine until...well, today, when i found out what i had actually done. my recipe called for hallertau and saaz hops, and i thought well, okay, i don't have those, but i do have these!!! galena and cascade.
fast-forward to today, i learned about alpha/beta acids and bittering units. and decided to go to my old bookmarked Brewer's Friend Recipe Calculator and plugged in my recipes.
this is the wheat beer i was about to make. i'm actually staring at the starter right now. (from the bottom of sierra nevada kellerweiss bottles, we'll see how that goes...)

this is the pale ale i just made.

The different hops definetly don't sub evenly for each other. So that'll be different flavor-wise moreso. Those pages don't give much info. What are you really wanting to know?

I think the very high IBU in his beer is what he's pointing out. Galena are very high alpha acid hops.

Go to beerlegends.com They list 100 varieties and then they describe the chemical & flavor makeup of them (all?). Print the list of vars for reference. Refer to the chemas needed. Very nice site.

That's one mistake you won't make again! Even the same varieties of hops vary in alpha acids from year to year.

For example, the amarillo hops I got last year are 6% AAUs. This year, they were 12% AAUs! And the last saaz hops I got were 2.8%, after getting 5.5% saaz.

Big differences, so make sure you are checking the "strength" of the hops even for very similar (or the same) varieties!

AlCophile said:

Go to beerlegends.com They list 100 varieties and then they describe the chemical & flavor makeup of them (all?). Print the list of vars for reference. Refer to the chemas needed. Very nice site.

Click to expand...

^^ This!!

Yooper said:

Big differences, so make sure you are checking the "strength" of the hops even for very similar (or the same) varieties!

Click to expand...

It's a good habit to go ahead and check them for every recipie you do when you get them, esp if you don't buy in bulk. I've gotten different strengths from different places in the same year. Not sure if it is different suppliers, older batches or what, so I just double check everything in BeerSmith before I do a recipie

Gunna check out the site in the link. Thanks. *hmmm,looks like basic brewing info?...

AlCophile said:

Go to beerlegends.com They list 100 varieties and then they describe the chemical & flavor makeup of them (all?). Print the list of vars for reference. Refer to the chemas needed. Very nice site.

Click to expand...

Can you provide a link, please? Every time I type: www.beerlegends. com
I am redirected to: http://whitewinered. com
which has a bunch of wine looking stuff, but no hop info that I can see.

http://beerlegends.com/hops-varieties

No WWW, or they didnt register that domain for some stupid reason lol.

AlCophile said:

Go to beerlegends.com They list 100 varieties and then they describe the chemical & flavor makeup of them (all?). Print the list of vars for reference. Refer to the chemas needed. Very nice site.

Click to expand...

this. is amazing. thank you.

Yooper said:

That's one mistake you won't make again! Even the same varieties of hops vary in alpha acids from year to year.

For example, the amarillo hops I got last year are 6% AAUs. This year, they were 12% AAUs! And the last saaz hops I got were 2.8%, after getting 5.5% saaz.

Big differences, so make sure you are checking the "strength" of the hops even for very similar (or the same) varieties!

Click to expand...

yeah i was really confused when i noticed that my pellet cascades had different numbers than my whole leaf cascades. being an engineering major, i'm used to things staying the same...not varying by season...

AlCophile said:

Go to beerlegends.com They list 100 varieties and then they describe the chemical & flavor makeup of them (all?). Print the list of vars for reference. Refer to the chemas needed. Very nice site.

Click to expand...

I agree it is a good site, but: There is surprisingly nothing about the hops I used in my most recent brew, Northern Brewer. Here is the best info I got on them, I figured they seemed like a good fit for what I was making "Traditional European lager bittering hop. Bitter and very fragrant with fair stability. (Alpha Acid Content 7.5 - 9%)" mine were at %8.0

FuzzeWuzze said:

http://beerlegends.com/hops-varieties

No WWW, or they didnt register that domain for some stupid reason lol.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link! I haven't heard of leaving off the www before.
:cross: