Hops recommendation for turnip beer?

[SquidPope]

After my parsnip beer experiment was a resounding success, I'm moving on to another vegetable beer, this time with turnips.

Since turnips are fairly earthy and bitter by themselves., I think they'll be able to replace the bittering hops. They're also very starchy, so I'll be using them in the mash; this will be a 2-gallon brew-in-a-bag recipe, using 2 pounds of grain/turnip total in the mash. From the parsnip beer, I know I have to grate the turnip and boil it ahead of time to gelatinize the starches and get them ready for mashing.

I haven't done the Lintner calculation yet, but I expect to use roughly equal amounts of 2-row and turnip with some CaraWheat Malt added for body, colour, and flavour. I might add some raw turnip near the end of the boil for an extra punch of turnip flavour. Yeast will be either S-04 or Nottingham, not sure which yet.

Do any of you have a suggestion for an aroma hop to use for this? I'm torn between using a floral hop or a spicier one.

 

[Owly055]

I think I'd use 6 row instead of 2 row........... Turnips seem an improbable source for starch.... I wonder if the spicy character will come through.... If so I would lean toward a floral or a fruity hop. My choice might be Mosaic with it's complex array of flavor. When I brew with Mosaic, I usually include a spice hop...........


H.W.

 

[JKaranka]

Saaz: nice, clean, spicy and refreshing.

 

[SquidPope]

I think I'd use 6 row instead of 2 row........... Turnips seem an improbable source for starch.

I would, but my local brew store only carries 2-row. Turnips definitely aren't as starchy as potatoes, according to my research, but this article about fermenting all kinds of unusual things puts them in the same category of mashable vegetables.

I'm not expecting to get very much fermentable sugars out of these, but it'll be good to have a baseline; I can always add extract to the next batch, after all

 

[1977Brewer]

I'd reccommend something that will cover up the flavor of turnips, and a lot of it.

 

[Talgrath]

I'd reccommend something that will cover up the flavor of turnips, and a lot of it.

That kind of takes away from the point of making a turnip beer though, I'm assuming the OP wants the turnip flavors to come through, at least somewhat.

 

[1977Brewer]

That kind of takes away from the point of making a turnip beer though, I'm assuming the OP wants the turnip flavors to come through, at least somewhat.

 

[Talgrath]

Hrrrm, personally I think I'd go with something that accentuates the radishy flavor of a turnip, so I'd lean towards spicy. Saaz does seem like a good choice to me since turnips are only mildly spicy, but personally I'd go with Summit. Summit has a bit of spice, but also an earthy, onion aroma that I think would compliment the turnip flavors nicely, though it's high alpha so I would suggest using it only towards the very end of the boil, maybe 10 minutes or less. Mt. Hood could also do well here, it's somewhat earthy like Summit.

 

[Talgrath]

If you were going for sarcasm there, I didn't pick up on it, sorry.

 

[1977Brewer]

If you were going for sarcasm there, I didn't pick up on it, sorry.

I just really hate turnips.

 

[SquidPope]

The funny thing is, after all of these recommendations I just ended up asking the LHBS owner for a recommendation, and used 0.25oz Northern Brewer at 5 minutes.

The brew itself went really smoothly, although the turnips (which are something like 94% water) didn't give up much starch. BeerSmith estimated my OG without them to be 1.030, and I ended up with 1.035. I think next time I'll save myself the extra time that boiling the turnips added, and just put the grated turnip directly into the boil around 60 minutes to get the flavour.

If you're curious to see pictures, look up #ProjectTurnipAle on Instagram or Twitter