Tag: hops

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Featured Review – A Hop Duo


Not content enough to make the logistical Day 1 IPA series, El Segundo Brewing is now embarking on level 1 of their Super Beer Bros. collaborative IPA series.

Up first is their work with the upcoming Washington State brewery, Grains of Wrath pours a reddish amber color. Doesn’t taste 8 percent. Red IPA? Good carbonation which leads to a quick palate bite. 2 days old. Subdued pine needles. Not quite grassy but the combo of malt and hops leads me to forest descriptors. Aroma is toward forest hike.

Having had a multitude of both SoCal and Oregon IPA’s, this bears the hallmark of both. Taming the sometimes harsh ESBC with the more restrained Oregon IPA.

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To Dust


Mark it down. January is when I proclaimed that Lupulin powder is the NE IPA of 2017. The poster child style of craft beer has been pulled from Cascadian to fruited to Session and sour. Meaning that there are not many other avenues to run down. Obviously until the next “It” hop is bred.

Enter powder. A “purified concentration of the resin compounds and aromatic oils in whole hop flowers…”

Will it become a stand-alone product? Or will it be used in concert with pellets or hop cones? Will the price (someone has to pay to grind the hops down) be justified in the beer?

From what I have read in a few places is that the powder reduces grass and vegetal notes and minimizing trub (hop sediment). In snout to tail usage, the powder is cryogenically removed from the hop leafs. Those leaves can then be used purely for aroma without imparting bitterness.

You can read up about how one brewery uses it HERE

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Beer Book Review – Complete IPA by Joshua Bernstein


Joshua Bernstein has made an admirable stab at the inimitable and intimidating IPA style (and sub-styles) in his book Complete IPA – The Guide to Your Favorite Craft Beer and he mostly succeeds.

Where I find fault is not so much the execution but the format chosen at the beginning. A book based on primarily reviews of IPA’s or in this case, more accurately, highlighting beers from U.S. regions that signify the IPA leads to a certain almanac type of style which can be repetitive even in the most descriptive of writers hands as Bernstein is.

It also leads to the inevitable stale aspect. Bernstein tosses out fun facts and covers a wide swath of breweries in this heavy hardback book which is great. I now have breweries to check out all across the country but he also tosses in other beers brewed of the non-IPA variety that distract from the topic at hand. It is great, overall, to know that brewery A in state B has a great stout but I would have preferred to know about the IPA philosophy of that brewery and how it was brewed to showcase the hops used. If that means less beers focused on, that is fine. I would rather have read ten longer pieces that detailed ten different IPA’s than a Top 10 list however well curated.

All of that is not to say that Complete IPA is not helpful. It is. It is succinct and clear and the beers that appear in the book are fine choices. (Though L.A. got extremely short shrift with only Beachwood getting a page for Amalgamator and Smog City getting a quick mention.) I really like Bernstein’s writing style as well. For such a narrow-ish topic, the book never gets repetitive with its adjectives. For what it wants to do, it is absolutely fine.

In the end, I am also still waiting for a history of the IPA in America to date.

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Top Hops 2016

For all of the Citra this and Mosaic that, the classic “C” hops are the ones with a stranglehold on the Top 3 in production according to the latest 2016 figures from the Brewers Association (the 2015 rank is in parentheses). Despite the rise of wild hops and hip new ones like Idaho 7, there is only one newbie to the list and I was happy to see that Hallertauer the Noble was still up there (even though it is the biggest dropper of the year)

1. Cascade [1]
2. Centennial [2]
3. Chinook [3]
4. Simcoe [4]
5. Citra [5]
6. Amarillo [7]
7. Mosaic [not ranked]
8. Crystal [8]
9. Hallertauer Mittelfruh [6]
10. CTZ [10]

What will 2017 bring in the hop fields?

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Tinyfield

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I read about Tinyfield Roofhop Farm in the latest Beer Advocate magazine (which also talked about the nascent efforts of Angel City to grow hops in the heat of DTLA)

This NYC rooftop farm grows “microgreens, salad greens, edible flowers, and hops in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.”

The farm began growing in 2015. More may come because the Farm Brewery Bill of the State of New York requires craft brewers to brew beer made primarily from NY grown farm products. By 2018, they need to use at least 60% state hops and other ingredients with the number growing to 90% by 2024. So supply will need to meet demand.

Now if California had a similar bill, maybe we can have places like Tinyfield which have 100 Cascade Hop plants up on the roof.

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Cooking with Hops

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Most craft beer cookbooks either fall into the camp of A) what to pair with beer or B) cooking with beer. But what about using the ingredients of beer in cooking, specifically hops?

That is the task undertaken by the Kickstarter funded book: Hedonistic Hops – The Hopeheads Guide to Kitchen Badassery by Marie Porter with photographs (and some commentary) from Michael Porter.

This book walks you through from growing your own hops all the way to harvesting and then the recipes that they can be used in. Of course, you can always buy hops and use those and the Porters are nimble enough to make recipes that can be used with fresh hops, pellets and even the shoots and leaves too.

The tone is genial sometimes verging on the hokey. I am still wondering about the choice of “badassery” for the sub-title but overall it is like talking to the somewhat goofy aunt or the dad with bad jokes while they are cooking. It is a welcoming tone throughout and the instructions and hop information is laid out in a way to re-focus on cooking and not brewing.

The main chunk of the book is devoted to recipes. Starting with appetizers and sides, then proceeding to Main Dishes, condiments, desserts before finishing at beverages.

For me, the section on condiments and sauces was the most intriguing. Creating a BBQ glaze or hoppy butter seems to be something that can be used in many different meal preparations and I think is under represented in cookbooks. Same goes for the beverages section. Making hop accented ice tea or lemonade are cool and quick ideas that adds something extra to a dinner.

If you cannot get enough hops and like brownies with green flecks in them, this might be the cookbook for you.

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Just Add Hops! Why?

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Still scratching my head over why there always seems to be a new hop addition product being sold. The latest is Hop-Shine which promises that their “hop essences make each pint of beer taste fresher, more flavorful and more aromatic, increasing beverage satisfaction.”

This might be a good product for home brewers and mixologists to use. Maybe for educational purposes.

FRUITY
“Wonderful aroma and flavors of a fresh hop crushed in your hand. Specially extracted to show off the natural delicate balance of aromas and bite of fresh picked wet hops with fruity and floral character.”

MEGABLEND
“Wonderful aroma and flavors of a fresh hop crushed in your hand. Specially extracted to show off the natural delicate balance of aromas and bite of fresh picked wet hops with blended fruity-floral / piney-spicy character.”

PINEY/SPICY
“Wonderful aroma and flavors of a fresh hop crushed in your hand. Specially extracted to show off the natural delicate balance of aromas and bite of fresh picked wet hops with blended piney spicy character.”

AROMATIC BITTER
“An authentic whole hop bitter just like you get in the boil, with very little flavor and a tad of aroma. Great for bumping up the tickle in the back of your tongue and the aromatic nose on your beverage.”

JUST BITTER
“An authentic whole hop bitter just like you get in the boil, no aroma to speak of. This baby only bitters. But wow, it does it with extra special finesse.”

I read about Hop Shine HERE.

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The Ag Desk

From the Agriculture Desk comes a couple pieces of news. We start in the Hill Country of Texas where Jester King has bought up land around their brewery (58 acres to be exact) to supply them with fruits, grains and generally make their farmhouse beers even more authentic by adding a farm.

Peaches, blackberries and melons along with a test plot of wheat have been started and will eventuallygrow to be larger parts of the beers they make. It also fits with their eco-ethos tha values the terroir over uniformity and very local over long distance shipping. What caught my eye more is that it puts the control of a percentage of their ingredients in their hands. They won’t have to vet each piece of fruit. They know the chain of travel that it took.

Stone tried and stepped away from farming but I hope this works and I hope more take it up or at least create brewery co-ops as it were to supply a portion of the ingredient list.

The 2nd news brief comes from the fine folks at the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Their hop report for Washington, Oregon and Idaho shows acres harvested in 2015 and acres strung for harvest in 2016 and it is a good barometer for what hops are being used and what is coming.

Starting negative, it Columbus/Tomahawk took the biggest dive in acres more than doubling the decreases for Nugget and Super Galena. Predictably Citra surged again, adding over 1,400 acres. Other non-surprises include large growth for Equinox and Simcoe as well as Mosaic. All adding over 900 additional acres.

Overall acreage crowns go to Cascade which is up to 7,371 approximately with Centennial in 2nd place with just over 5K. The numbers that jumped out for me was that Experimental hops had a healthy leap upwards as did Azacca. Plus Cashmere hop is now out of the other/experimental category and on it’s own along with Tahoma and Pekko.

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The Firkin for May 2016

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To be upfront, I have no qualm with a brewery evolving. Styles and tastes do change in brewers as well as customers.

If an English-style mild is being outsold by an IPA, then it makes prudent business sense to make more IPA and to make the mild a specialty to drive up interest. I also understand that a Belgian-style brewery will eventually head into IPA country. I saw the crowds that were drawn in by it. Again just solid business sense.

Where I start to get queasy is when the diversity starts vanishing like Marty McFly’s siblings. As a snapshot, two weeks ago my drinking list included 4 IPA’s, 1 DIPA, a hemp ale, 2 Belgian blondes, 3 Saisons, a milk stout, an imperial wit, wine barrel aged Saison and a craft pilsner. Now that is still heavily weighted to hops but that is partially because the marketplace is heavily driven by IPA’s.

So when I see that eateries like Laurel Tavern (which I like and haven’t been to in a long time) and Forman’s (which I have not visited) and their overarching restaurant group have teamed up with MacLeod’s for a beer that is described as an “English inspired, west coast driven pale ale they named Tasty Cold Beer.” I cringe a little because I want to see a drive towards more truer English styles, more cask ales and not away from it.

Nothing against MacLeod’s or their new brewer Josiah. And maybe it is just the name of the beer and the shortened TCB moniker that rankles me. I will be tasting it before passing any final judgement. I mean, it is still Yorkshire yeast and just Mt. Hood and Crystal hops, and certainly not a West Coast hop bomb at 31 IBU’s but I guess I sorta don’t need more hoppy pales or hoppy pilsners or hoppy Belgians or hoppy ciders. The underlying styles are being dosed too liberally with hops (and then the hops with fruit, but that is another rant).

I don’t mean to sound too much like the cranky grandpa, other beer writers have that doomy & gloomy beat covered, but I guess I wish there was business room for a brewery to thrive brewing the styles that are often overlooked and under bought. Or maybe I need to lead by example and take the dive into a hopless month or a hopless week each month.

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HVG

There are some great websites with hop information on them but recently Hopsteiner the large hop grower/distributor has refreshed its website and added a really helpful snapshot of hop data.

The Hopsteiner’s Hop Varieties Grid has brand new hops photography which helps to visually differentiate the hops, multiple sort levels including by Experimental or Aroma and a handy sheet of information that to this beer blogger was just right without getting too overboard in technical terms. You get an aroma graph, genetic origin, similar hops and other facts. It is easy to use and share which is key.
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I would have liked to see them add what blends are normally used with each hop so that you could gain a knowledge of what pairs well but that is a small quibble in what is an excellent website revamp.