Am I the only one not crazy about Galaxy? Frequently has a lime character and harshness (often vegetal) that I've noticed in many examples (Tree House, Monkish, Alvarado Street, Cellarmaker, etc.). It's good but not my favorite and certainly not a holy grail varietal for me
I feel like it used to be much more consistent. Never had a bad Double Galaxy from HF (Haven’t has many) and early batches of Congress Street were very memorable.
One of the most memorable beers I’ve ever made was an all Galaxy beer that smelled like passion fruit candy with zero earthiness.
Just made a beer with HPA-016 and Galaxy that was really Anise/Licorice for maybe the first three weeks in the keg. It has started to evolve completely in the last 5 days and that anise/earth has faded and the really interesting fruit qualities are starting to shine. Never had any burn or astringency but that anise character was rather overpowering. I blamed it on the HPA-016 but it could be both.
I’ve never bought onion/garlic/chive Galaxy hops before like a lot of brewers complain about but I’ve had it in commercial Galaxy beers.
I think it’s similar to when Citra got crazy ramped up in acreage and got really bad for a while. I think Galaxy has exploded and consequently quality has suffered. Need to do another all Galaxy beer with the new stuff I just got. Place prints the lot numbers on the Homebrew packaging and from what my trusted sources have told me that lot number should be pretty good based on their past experiences in trying to analyze when they get good stuff and what’s not so good. Who knows.