My thoughts on Hallertau Blanc

[joshesmusica]

Meh... well kinda... it depends.

So I've only tried it in two beers thus far. Not much to get the full scope of this thing, I know.

The first one was an all cascade pale ale, my first attempt at all-grain biab, and the beer sucked arse. The batch was split in two, and after primary ferment had ramped down I dry-hopped one with cascade and one with HB. Although the beer sucked, the aroma was very present off of both. I love cascade. That aroma was amazing. But I the HB one was just really not too pleasant. My wife likes it, fwiw, but it just wasn't what I expected off of the description. It just so happens that I had about a half a bottle at the end of bottling each one, so I decided to mix the two. At that point, I would say that the cascade and HB actually complemented each other quite well.

The second batch was kinda a dumb idea. Again going off of the description, and before getting a chance to try the pale ale, I got crazy and tried to make a nut brown ale that was slightly dry hopped with HB. I thought that the part about the floral and passion fruit would mix well as an overtone to the toffee and nut. It didn't at all. Again, not a stand alone hop.

I have a ton of cascade and citra from a huge batch of pale ale that I made over the weekend. So I think I might make another couple of small pale ale batches or IPAs over the summer to get my all-grain biab down, and see how they pair dry hopped in combo with HB, since the mixture of the split batch seemed promising.

 

[bierhaus15]

Hallertau blanc is bred from cascade and shares many similarities, but it retains some noble like character. You aren't going to brew a hop bomb along the likes of citra with this. It does go fruity and all that, but its still subtle.

If you really want this hop to shine, a simple blonde or crisp pils is the way to go.

 

[joshesmusica]

i still think it should not be on its own. but that is of course my personal opinion.

i guess it's along the same lines that i had some people that really prefer a citrusy/fruity mixture of something like dr. rudi paired with something like chinook. but i actually like dr. rudi all by itself.

so take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

 

[Yooper]

I'm pretty sure @pappers_ has used hallertauer blanc in a very good beer recently. He would be able to give more details, but I do remember discussing this with him recently.

 

[Jonkl]

A local brewery down here did a SMaSH using Hallertau Blanc. To me, it smelled like the guy who always ends up standing right behind my right shoulder during a rock concert, and proceeds to make me smell like him, too, if you get my drift. I'd sum it up as Noble meets Cascade with a little American dankness.

 

[joshesmusica]

yeah, i'd say if you threw in some floral notes to that drift that you're throwing out there, then you're right on track with that.