Noob_Brewer
Well-Known Member
So when I did this beer, I hadn't ever brewed with either hop before so I was kinda flying solo on this and judging my hop additions based on comments (mostly nectaron) here as well as spec sheets and descriptions. I don't think I ever had even a commercial beer with nectaron yet either. Im usually pretty calculated in my choices but this combo just got me more and more excited the more I researched these hops. I just thought they'd go well together and decided to live dangerously lol. Was looking for passionfruit with peach bomb overall. So given both have listed at 1.7 total oils, I thought they might be even overall with potency - yes I know total oils don't tell the whole story but thats what I was basing it off of. I wanted moutere to provide the backbone and nectaron to bring it on home. Both hop descriptions suggest passionfruit as a strong characteristic but nectaron brings more stone fruit/peach. So overall, nectaron:moutere was just under a 2:1 ratio, but as you can see in my schedule I used more moutere hot side and then flipped it to hammer the nectaron in DH. The hydrometer sample (pre soft crash and pre-dry hop was amazingly smooth fruity goodness with a nice pronounced bitterness (grapefruit bitterness primarily). IMO - neither of these NZ hops are over the top in terms of NZ diesel/peppery/etc. You do get some of it, but its in the background and not distracting from the fruit bomb that it is. FWIW - I whirlpool at one temp (155 target) so Im probably not doing anything special by breaking WP additions into 15minute increments other than affecting the IBUs in the whirlpool by like 1-2 IBUs lol. But this is how Ive been approaching the WP and I enjoy building a nice hot side profile, so I don't skimp on the WP. It really is a great hop combo. Hope this helps! BTW - I used A24 yeast with this beer as well.I am also going to try nectaron in one of my next batches.
My lhbs recommends
WP: Nectaron, Mosaic 1:1
DH: Nectaron, Mosaic 1:1
But inspired you post I might try something like
WP: Moutere, Nectaron 2:1
DH: Nectaron
What was your ratio?
EDIT: just realized my DH days are a little off. I started cold crashing 24 hrs after the second dry hop and kegged it 4 days after the first dry hop. So hops were in the beer a little longer than my table suggests.