Apollo, Summit, Columbus...thoughts & experiences?

[snowveil]

I've recently picked up a 2014 crop pound of each of Apollo, Summit, and Columbus.

I've used each hop before, primarily as supporting hops, with great success.

I used Apollo in a bud-light dry hop experiment for my local club and was very pleasantly surprised at how well it held up against some more in vogue hops (such as citra) with aroma potential.

I know Summit can get a bad rap, but I know it's largely dependent on time of harvest. The last time I used it the pellets had a noticeable onion aroma out of the bag but it didn't carry over as strongly through the boil.

Columbus is probably the most familiar of the three but still seems to be pretty well ignored in favor of Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic, etc nowadays.

I've got a sixer of blonde/apa bottle conditioning right now on top of 1-1.5 grams of each hop (2 bottles per variety) that I plan on blending in various ratios to find out what each hop brings to the table and how I may be able to blend them to my liking for dry hopping.

My plan is to build a house IPA recipe based around 2-3 of these hops so I'm not stuck in the vogue hop world of simcoe, citra, mosaic, and whatever else is coming around the corner.

Off the cuff, I'm thinking something along the lines of:

12lbs american 2-row
8oz amber malt or biscuit malt

.5oz columbus FWH
.5oz columbus 30 min
2oz Apollo 30 minute hopstand at 180*F
2oz Summit 30 minute hopstand at 180*F

Ferment with wlp090 or wlp001

Dry hop with 1oz Apollo, 1oz Summit, .5oz Columbus.

I guess the real question is...what is everyone's experience with these hops? I know I can anticipate "dank" flavors, which I don't mind. Has anyone blended these in a recipe as stars of the show, or just used them as supports to other, more popular varieties?

 

[Bramstoker17]

Apollo is one of the best bittering hops out there in my opinion, I use it a lot in that capacity, but it makes for a great late addition hop as well. Like you said, you're going to get some dankness from it, as well as some orange citrus flavor. I use it as a supporting player though, I've heard it can be a bit much when overdone during late/dry hop additions.

I've never used Summit, so I can't add anything there.

Columbus is another hop I use similar to Apollo, good for bitter, good for late additions/dry hop. I've never used it as the star of the show, but in my DIPA I frequently make its used pretty heavily with Simcoe and some of the fruitier varieties as supporters.

 

[snowveil]

Thanks for the feedback.

I used Columbus/Simcoe/Summit together in a DIPA a few years ago that I preemptively named "Dirty Double IPA" but it wound out coming out surprisingly citrusy instead of dank. Troegs released their Perpetual IPA (as a seasonal) soon after I brewed it and I was shocked at how similar they tasted.

It was:
13lb 2 row
1.5lb vienna
8oz crystal 10
8oz table sugar

1oz columbus @ 60
1oz columbus @ 15
1oz simcoe @ 10
1oz summit @ 5
1oz simcoe @ 3
1oz summit & 1oz columbus @ flameout

and 1oz each simcoe/columbus in the dry hop.

I wish I took better tasting notes or had/have better flavor descriptors to describe the beer. I just remember it being excellent.


The other time I've used Apollo/Summit heavily is in Nate Smith's "The Dankness IPA" recipe.

Both of these beers, while using Apollo/Summit or Summit/Columbus as major players, also rely on Simcoe relatively heavily. I may just pull out some more blonde ale and dry hop it in the bottle with simcoe to see if it's really necessary to round out the flavors.

 

[m00ps]

Yeah columbus is what comes to mind when I think of dank hops. But have you tried comet? It can be so dank that some brewer dont like it at all. Its especially potent in dry hopping

Also, for some reason, the 2014 harvest of Galaxy seems super dank to me. I've ordered some and had a few beers with it. Like Schlaflys Tasmanian IPA (100% galaxy) was so fruity and tropical in 2013 then the last years version was one of the dankest beers I've drank

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Apollo is probably the hops I use most in my IPAs. I actually only use it as very late addition, hop stand and dry hop. Never actually used it for bittering. As a hop stand and dry hop it gives a lot of grapefruit flavor and aroma - kind of cascade on steroids. Love it. Not a big fan of summit and I've only used columbus a few times. Can't actually remember how I liked it so I guess it wasn't very memorable.

 

[slym2none]

I've used Columbus in the last two brews I've made. I really like it. Columbus & Centennial make a nice combo, and hearing about Apollo makes me want to try it, now.

 

[snowveil]

I've never used comet before, so I can't speak to that. I'm not necessarily looking to make an over-the-top dank beer...I'm not not averse to those flavors or aromas.

It'll be interesting to see what the dry hop experimentation comes up with.

 

[snowveil]

Apollo is probably the hops I use most in my IPAs. I actually only use it as very late addition, hop stand and dry hop. Never actually used it for bittering. As a hop stand and dry hop it gives a lot of grapefruit flavor and aroma - kind of cascade on steroids. Love it. Not a big fan of summit and I've only used columbus a few times. Can't actually remember how I liked it so I guess it wasn't very memorable.

When I did the dry hop experiment for my homebrew club I was pleasantly surprised at how much positive reception there was for Apollo. I heard a few folks mention how they really needed to try it in their next beer.

Reading more about summit makes me think I may shift the balance more towards Apollo/Columbus with Summit as more of a support hop. I'm still not sure, but provided it turns out well enough I plan to tweak this recipe over time.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

I've used Summit to bitter an IPA but the rest of the hops kind of overwhelmed any residual effect of the summit. It was just a high alpha I had around.

I have honed my DIPA in a bit. I use a ton of Apollo and Columbus. I had some friends try the last version and they both had a funny look on their face. They had that "uhhh, is this illegal???" look. After reading this I think I'll give comet a go. My friend is ordering hops again so I'll have to put another order in this year. I've got to quit brewing hoppy stuff. Burning up 2# per batch is getting expensive!

 

[snowveil]

OK....here we go.

Here's the experiment. I brewed a Victory Summer Love - inspired blonde/apa with this recipe:

6lb Avangard Pils
4lb Briess 2 row
8oz Briess Carapils
3oz Acidulated malt

Mash at 155*F, batch sparge

.6oz magnum @ 60 minutes
1oz tettnang @ 15 minutes
.5oz citra @ flameout
.5oz tettnang @ flameout

Ferment with WLP090 @65*, ramped to 68* at end of fermentation.

1.052->1.013, 40IBU, 5.1%abv

When kegging, I bottled and primed directly onto ~1.25grams of each apollo, columbus, and summit in individual bottles. I let them sit at room temp for a week, cold crashed for a day, then poured off into tasting glasses to evaluate and blend. I'll preface this by saying that I'm in no way a well-trained taster, or bjcp certified or anything like that. I've been brewing for about 5 years and drinking craft beer for 10. That being said, here are the results that I came up with:

Apollo

Aroma: Resinous and "sticky"... some citrus but not bright like traditional C-hops.
Flavor: More sweet citrus and dank/resin character.
The internet says "Orange, Resin, Spicy, Dank". I don't really get "spicy", but the rest of the descriptors are what I experienced. Definitely the Dankest of the 3.

Summit

Aroma: Herbal, sweet orange. More subtle than I anticipated. Don't really get any onion/garlic on it's own.
Flavor: Again, sweet orange and herbal. Similar to Apollo in that it's not a bright citrus character like you'd expect in c-hops.
The internet says "Orange, Tangerine, Grapefruit, Onion, Garlic, Earthy, Spice." I didn't get the onion/garlic on it's own. Earthy I guess I can get, but mostly herbal/orange

Columbus

Aroma: Bright classic Cascade/Centennial grapefruit character. Aggressively so. Reminds me in a small way of a citrus-based household cleaner with minor gasoline character on the back end.
Flavor: Grapefruit Grapefruit Grapefruit. Very bright like a grapefruit zest almost. Very much like cascade/centennial.
The internet says "Earthy, pungent, citrus, sharp, herbal, licorice, black pepper." This is definitely the brightest of the 3 hops.

OK, on to the blends...first of with 1:1

1:1 Apollo:Columbus

Aroma: Columbus pretty much leads the show with bright citrus character. The Apollo dank/resinous character is in the background
Flavor: "darkest" flavor of the three 1:1 combinations. Citrusy in foreground but not as bright as columbus by itself.

1:1 Apollo:Summit

Aroma: Herbal, Orange, Dank. Sweet aroma.
Flavor: Sweet orange, but a little muddled version of the two hops individually.

1:1 Columbus:Summit

Aroma: Bright, Deisel, Citrus. Columbus leads the show and pretty much overpowers the Summit.
Flavor: Herbal/citrus with a gasoline like finish. Not great, not terrible.

After pouring the 1:1 blends, I did some other blends to find out where I might want to go:

1:1:1 Apollo:Columbus:Summit

Aroma: Surprisingly, this actually brought out the onion/garlic in the Summit. It's not incredibly aggressive, but there's really no single thing that stands out.
Flavor: Just muddy. Not something I'd be happy with.

2:1 Apollo:Columbus

Aroma: Retains a lot of dankness/resin from the Apollo and just a touch of bright citrus from the Columbus compliments the sweet orange from the Apollo.
Flavor: Dank, Resinous, minor gasoline and citrus finishes it out and lingers.

This is probably my favorite blend.

2:1 Apollo:Summit

Aroma: The onion comes out a little in this one, but it's not aggressive. It's kind of an "Herbal/Dank" blend that maybe some could find off-putting but I like.
Flavor: Sweet orange, resinous, herbal & onion. The Summit definitely adds some complexity to the Apollo

My 2nd favorite of all of the blends. More interesting than any single dry hop also.

Conclusions?

Apollo is definitely a way under-used hop. On it's own it's good but when I started blending it with a little bit of another hop it really brought it out of it's shell and brightened it up. I'll probably wind up going with 2:1 Apollo:Columbus for the first iteration of my recipe. 2:1 Apollo:Summit was nice too but I think other people I serve it to might not like it as much.

cheers!

 

[geejay]

I brew almost exclusively with Columbus and Cascade hops and have no complaints. I got a good deal on 11 pounds of each so I stocked up
So far, I only use the Columbus for bittering. Cascade gets used for aroma, flavor, and sometimes for bittering.

 

[JF_HBrews]

Nice write up on you experiment snowveil. thanks for sharing the details.

 

[Bramstoker17]

I second that, awesome write up and thanks for sharing!!!