Help identify my hops

[travisg]

Hi everyone this is my first post and I have a tough one for you.

Please help me identify my hop plants! These 4 plants were all in identical pots. Then I had help moving to a new house during winter and they're all mixed up now. The varieties are Chinook, perle, crystal and brewers gold. What's worse, they never produced cones at my old house so I never sampled them before..

Plant 1. I'm pretty sure this is the Chinook. A hop tea from this was the most citrus forward.

Plant 2. My guess is this is the perle hops. Cones are smaller and this tasted the most pungent of the hop teas.

Plant 3. No hop tea sample as this is the most scraggly plant and the cones are all 10 feet up and out of easy reach. Plant is smaller and cones are also smaller. Leaves are a bit on the larger and yellower-pale-green side.

Plant 4. More pungent than plant 1, less so than plant 2. One of the more vigorous growers.

Any ideas?

 

[vtec4me21]

You're on the right track using a hop tea with the samples. I use that with my four varieties to get an idea of how they are progressing for bitterness and flavor before each harvest season.
The only way I could think of to figure this out would be to buy the same hop varieties at a home brew shop and make a hop tea of those and compare against your home grown hops. Use the same volume of water, time, etc. for the comparison. Find someone else and have them sample as well if you are still unsure.

I have a Chinook plant and typically when sampling a hop tea of 4oz. water @ 185*F for 5 mins. steep time of one cone I'll note it was bitter and the flavors were pine forward with a hint of citrus. Aroma was pine. That is my perception and yours could be very different. Although the general rule is this variety has a pine / citrus profile. Using this example of the varieties might help.

I don't have any of those other varieties though to help you out.

Here's a couple sites that might help with identification.
Good for a general idea of profile and the plant cone size / density: Chinook - Hopslist
The main list: Hop Varieties - Hopslist
Another list with detailed profiles (view the technical specifications to see a sensory analysis wheel): Hop Varieties - Commercial