Been a mixed year for my bines. The Magnum and chinook have grown gangbusters, with a great crop on each of the two pairs of bines.
My Fuggles have been, well, mediocre, with a small crop, and my Goldings really seem to have done poorly, with a smaller crop and sparse growth. Not certain if this is the result of nutrition, water amounts, or if they simply do not handle the heat well.
I have a further 5 or 6 bines that are doing pretty well, two from crowns that I dug and replanted from a set that were found where a cousin had planted them, and 3 or 4 more that were plugged into a gully near a pretty good source of water, to grow wild across the tops of the wild roses there.
I am looking for some input as to how to guess at these latter hops variety.
All my cousin had for info was that the hops were supposedly from a plant that was supposedly one of the ones that had been grown here commercially earlier the last century, possibly as late as the 1950's, but that is conjecture and guess at best.
Am I correct in figuring that nothing short of a DNA analysis will give me a positive ID?
Next best then, is a direct comparison of the taste and smell, with the stuff I DO know, then.
Anything I ought to know about making a tea, and what I can do to get a reasonable chance of being able to taste and smell the differences? Add some DME to the boil?
All I know for sure is that the unidentified hops in the gully had some cones still present on the old bines, and still quite fragrant when I discovered them this spring. The two I transplanted have a pretty good crop of cones forming, and while I do not know for sure they are of the same lot as the gully hops, I suspect that they are.
I guess at the end of it all, I wouldn't mind a pointer or two as to what to look at and how to go about making a tea for comparison purposes.
Straight at some hot water? Boil for a time? Long boil, with checking along the way? Malt or no? Don't really think a SMaSH is in order without a real good idea of the bittering power of these, or is that a better idea than it seem to me? I suppose a fella could try a gallon or so brew of known vs. unknown. But I am not really there quite yet.
TeeJo
My Fuggles have been, well, mediocre, with a small crop, and my Goldings really seem to have done poorly, with a smaller crop and sparse growth. Not certain if this is the result of nutrition, water amounts, or if they simply do not handle the heat well.
I have a further 5 or 6 bines that are doing pretty well, two from crowns that I dug and replanted from a set that were found where a cousin had planted them, and 3 or 4 more that were plugged into a gully near a pretty good source of water, to grow wild across the tops of the wild roses there.
I am looking for some input as to how to guess at these latter hops variety.
All my cousin had for info was that the hops were supposedly from a plant that was supposedly one of the ones that had been grown here commercially earlier the last century, possibly as late as the 1950's, but that is conjecture and guess at best.
Am I correct in figuring that nothing short of a DNA analysis will give me a positive ID?
Next best then, is a direct comparison of the taste and smell, with the stuff I DO know, then.
Anything I ought to know about making a tea, and what I can do to get a reasonable chance of being able to taste and smell the differences? Add some DME to the boil?
All I know for sure is that the unidentified hops in the gully had some cones still present on the old bines, and still quite fragrant when I discovered them this spring. The two I transplanted have a pretty good crop of cones forming, and while I do not know for sure they are of the same lot as the gully hops, I suspect that they are.
I guess at the end of it all, I wouldn't mind a pointer or two as to what to look at and how to go about making a tea for comparison purposes.
Straight at some hot water? Boil for a time? Long boil, with checking along the way? Malt or no? Don't really think a SMaSH is in order without a real good idea of the bittering power of these, or is that a better idea than it seem to me? I suppose a fella could try a gallon or so brew of known vs. unknown. But I am not really there quite yet.
TeeJo
