Testing hop flavors

[lyacovett]

I am looking in to purchasing a lb of hops. I was looking in to EKG and Fuggles, but couldn't decide between the two, because I had nothing to compare the flavors of each to. I ended up buying 1 ounce of each. My idea is to brew 2 small batches. Probably a mild, bitter with an american hop (Willamette, Centennial, Columbus ...), and and the Fuggles and EKG in at 10-15 minutes.

Would this be a fair comparison between the two? I intend to use the same grain bill for each, but am concerned about using an american hop for bittering. Will this interfere with the flavor of the English hops too much?

 

[tdoft]

I think your plan is a good. I'd consider doing a smash with each and skip out on any American hop
Additions. I 'm in the midst of a similar experiment. I obtained a 15 gallon keg of Sunshine Wheat (New Belgium) and have decided to test different hop flavors by splitting them into different 5 gallon cornies and using a different dryhop in each one. The first hop I used was Hallertauer-freshly dried from my AWESOME local hop farm High Hops Brewshop-and after only a few hours the clean crisp, almost apple-like flavor was coming through. You could easily do a similar trick with two growlers-same relatively neutral base beer and dryhop each with the hops in question. Whichever growler is gone the fastest is your go to order for a full pound!

 

[prosper]

Making verticals is a good technique. I'll often make up a full batch of wort, and separate it into 1-gallon jugs to test the effects of varying a single ingredient, yeast, or hop.

The local hardware store had some cheap, thin, 16qt stainless stockpots on at a massive markdown, so I can do 4 simultaneous stovetop boils for making various test batches


...playing with your beer is fun

 

[SumnerH]

I am looking in to purchasing a lb of hops. I was looking in to EKG and Fuggles, but couldn't decide between the two, because I had nothing to compare the flavors of each to. I ended up buying 1 ounce of each. My idea is to brew 2 small batches. Probably a mild, bitter with an american hop (Willamette, Centennial, Columbus ...), and and the Fuggles and EKG in at 10-15 minutes.

Would this be a fair comparison between the two? I intend to use the same grain bill for each, but am concerned about using an american hop for bittering. Will this interfere with the flavor of the English hops too much?

Willamette isn't a classic American hop; it's originally a Fuggles variant, though it's changed a lot in the interim. To me it tastes kind of half-British, half-American.

If you can split in 1 gallon batches for experimentation, you could do worse than testing EKG, Fuggles, Cascade, Centennial, and Amarillo.