Citra hops and off flavors

[BigRedHopHead]

From everything I have read and learned about citra you have to be careful with dry hopping. I have heard a couple pro brewers indicate they only dry hop with citra for 3-4 days. A full 7 days seems to give off the cat pee aroma/flavor people mention. I too have done the zombie dust clone with all citra and never had a metallic taste. But if you look at the recipe the IBU's come from hop bursting, no 60 min addition. I have never used citra earlier than 20 min in any recipe.

 

[Calichusetts]

Never heard of the cat pee with citra and I have had amazing results with it. I usually dry hop for 7 too. Just dry hopped a saison with citra and my only critique is its quite strong (granted the beer is very young). Never had any off flavors for that matter

 

[Socalsleeper]

I am going to keg tomorrow out of my secondary which has been dry hopped (leaf) with 2 ounces of Citra for 3 weeks. I will let you guys know how much cat piss I get (and my brother and his fiancé who will have no knowledge of this off flavor) and report back. Last time I made this I didn't have any off favors. Had a bunch of housework that needed to get done the past month and a half and has forced me to put everything else on the back burner.

 

[BreezyBrew]

After thinking and tasting further I have come to the following conclusion. I can see how the perceived taste could come across as metallic, even though that's not exactly how I experienced it. It didn't really ring a particular flavor to me other than just off and possibly contaminated.

My Citra hops that I purchased from my LHBS were quite yellow in color. Seems as though someone was trying to stretch a crop farther than it needed to.

 

[Adavis1989]

After thinking and tasting further I have come to the following conclusion. I can see how the perceived taste could come across as metallic, even though that's not exactly how I experienced it. It didn't really ring a particular flavor to me other than just off and possibly contaminated.

My Citra hops that I purchased from my LHBS were quite yellow in color. Seems as though someone was trying to stretch a crop farther than it needed to.

Glad to know I'm maybe not crazy

 

[Adavis1989]

After letting the beard age for about a week I've noticed that the off taste is significantly less and is quite possible to almost drink

 

[Randy_Bugger]

After letting the beard age for about a week I've noticed that the off taste is significantly less and is quite possible to almost drink

Normally, you have to age a beard a lot longer than a week to drink it.

 

[Randy_Bugger]

Cat pee fades faster than the good smells. It will be gone after two months in the bottle.

Some research has been done on the cat pee aroma from hops. Most men can't smell it. Most women can. I'm one of the "lucky" men who can smell it from across the room.

 

[Adavis1989]

So I tried making another citra hop tea (1 quart of water to 1/4 oz of citra with a different batch of hops ) and got the same metalic taste at first. Then I tried taking like 2 tbps of the tea into 1 cup of water and got a less horrendous taste . Maybe I over hopped the first time ?

 

[day_trippr]

I would say at this point that your genes are incompatible with Citra...

 

[BreezyBrew]

Agree. Or try and obtain some highly hopped commercial Citra beers.

 

[Randy_Bugger]

So I tried making another citra hop tea (1 quart of water to 1/4 oz of citra with a different batch of hops ) and got the same metalic taste at first. Then I tried taking like 2 tbps of the tea into 1 cup of water and got a less horrendous taste . Maybe I over hopped the first time ?

A hop tea brewed with water will not yield the same results as hops brewed and fermented with beer.

I've tasted thousands of commercial craft beers, but less than 50 beers that use Citra including my own. I can't say metallic is a descriptor that I'd assign to any beer.

I'm going with you don't like Citra or you don't like bitter beers.

 

[GotPushrods]

I would also recommend finding some commercial examples with Citra. If it only happens when you brew it, something different might be going on.

But I will say that some people just perceive tastes differently.

I once brewed my favorite pale ale, but decided to use all Centennial hops. I thought it was soapy and didn't care for the hop flavor. I tried a commercial example and discovered the same thing. You just never know. I thought Cents were pretty well regarded before I tried that.