the single hop project

to learn more about hops quickly, i'm making a dozen 3/4gal single hop small batches.

the basic plan: do a single mash of maris otter aiming for ~18plato and use a single ounce of each for bittering, aroma, flavor and dry hopping. this forces the IBUs to the low side (50) and allows for .4oz dry hop, but since the goal is not to make 10 gallons of awesome beer but 12 examples of what each hop can do, i'm pretty satisfied.

this is the equivalent of hop bursting 4oz and dry hopping 3oz, so i should get a pretty clear representation of each hop's characteristics and potency.

due to a lack of fermenters, this has been split into halves. the first set was brewed three weeks ago and will be chilled, force carbed and served from a one gallon taylor syrup converted keg this sunday.

-citra
-centennial
-simcoe
-caliente (available from yakima valley hops)
-motueka

my friend, who picked up the grain, forgot to buy additional gallon carboys, so we were capped at three plus two washed/sanitized glass pickle jars. unfortunately, it appears the pickle aroma may have held on and wrecked the centennial and simcoe batches.

the next batch will be heavily NZ: nelson, green bullet, pacific jade, galaxy, mosaic and columbus. we may redo the centennial and simcoe as well.

i'll be interested to see if you get more out of caliente than i did which was nothing in terms of flavor or aroma, good bittering though.

it was probably the mildest going into the fermenter, but i'm curious to see where it ends. did you dry hop?

yes i did and got nothing at all. even rubbing the hops between my hands produced only a very mild grassy aroma that was not hop like at all. i still use caliente for bittering so the pound i bought was not a loss.