The latest in Acorn’s fascinating series of beers showcasing New Zealand hops uses Green Bullet, a variety I’ve never heard of before. Green by name and green by nature — this tasted raw, grassy and herbal. I thought it was just the right side of astringent, but still probably a bit more bitter than I’d like. It slipped down very nicely, nonetheless.
Boak
Acorn Brewery’s experiments with IPAs using single varieites of New Zealand hops continue with number four in the series, which uses Nelson Sauvin.
I was excited about this one, hoping it would give me that elderflower kick I love so much.
Unfortunately, in this particular brew, I found the bitterness just too intense. Is that to do with the hop variety or the amount they used? I guess it must be quite difficult to reformulate the recipe each time to maintain the right ratio of hop bitterness to hop flavour.
I’m still loving the concept though, and looking forward to the next one.
Boak
We’ve not done a lot of homebrewing recently — we’ve either been out and about at weekends or too tired.
And, when we have brewed in the last year or so, the results haven’t been as brilliant as we would have liked. We’re getting to be quite finicky and are past the stage of being pleasantly surprised our beer is vaguely drinkable. We can buy drinkable beers easily and cheaply: we want our beers to be astounding.
We’re not trying to make wacky or extreme beers, and maybe that’s why its become a challenge. There’s nowhere to hide in something as simple as an altbier or best bitter — malt, hops and subtle yeast leave you very exposed.
The trouble is, it can be really difficult to nail down what’s wrong, particularly when it’s not so much an off flavour as the absolute absence of a key flavour. And, as you address some problems, others emerge. For example, we’ve been concentrating on improving the malt flavour by experimenting with lower temperatures, decoctions etc., so it’s disappointing then to taste the latest batch; note that, yes, there are lovely malt flavours; but be disappointed to find that they are overwhelmed by a ‘homebrew’ flavour that means we still wouldn’t want to drink several in a single sitting.
There are so many variables to play with — where do you start?
We’ve been inspired by enthusiastic hop-related posting at the Thornbridge Brewer’s Blog, Reluctant Scooper and Geoff’s website to get brewing again in earnest and, like Geoff, we’re going to do more single hop brews to try to learn a bit more about the differences between varieties.
We’re big fans of experimental beers made with a single variety of hop and (so far) have yet to have a bad beer from Barnsley’s Acorn Brewery, so we just had to try Motueka IPA at the Pembury Tavern.
The beer was fantastic — quenching, herbal and dry, with perhaps just a hint of banana in the aroma — but, on this showing, we’d be hard pressed to identify Motueka hops if we came across them again without a bloody great big sign telling us they were there. We tend to hop from beer to beer if there are several on offer but went back for more of this, Tandleman-style, which must say something.
For more single hop action check out Geoff’s fascinating homebrewing experiments.
Update 17/03/10 — of course we meant “a single variety of hop” rather than “a single hop”. How crap would that beer be?
We’ve noticed this week that a couple of bottled German beers on sale in the UK — including Franziskaner wheat beer — list only malt, yeast and hop extract in their ingredients lists.
It’s quite common for even decent beers to contain hop extract as well as hops to add a bit of pep, but is it going too far to use nothing but?
It makes us feel a bit uneasy.
A hop flower (from Wikimedia Commons, photographed by LuckyStar).
York Brewery occasionally produce beers using only a single varieties of hop. Their latest effort, Perle (4%), uses only that famous German ‘noble’ hop. The pump clip is adorned with German flags, and it’s hard not to suspect that the beer was inspired by a trip to Duesseldorf.
The fact that only one type of hop is used meant that we were able to focus on and appreciate its coppery, dry flavour and retrospectively recognise it as one we’d come across in various German beers. We’re learning, one hop at a time.
York are to be applauded for this kind of thought-provoking experiment. But don’t get the idea it was a purely intellectual exercise: hops aside, it’s a really tasty beer.
Our empty polypins, looking almost as rough as we did after the party
We’ve been experimenting with serving our homebrew from polypins for a while now. After some initial confusion, we’ve nailed the process and can now turn out pretty convincing “cask conditioned” beer at our parties.
At this weekend’s bash, we were able to go one step further and offer two variations on the same beer — one straight, and one with extra hops in the cask.
The result was remarkable, with the beers scarcely resembling each other. It helped that we added a good few handfuls of unsubtle cascade hops, which always have a pretty intense effect on the aroma and flavour of a beer.
Do any commercial breweries flog almost the same beer under two names using a neat trick along these lines, we wonder?
Polypins are easy once you know to (a) leave them be, even when they’re swelling up in a disturbing fashion; (b) put them somewhere cold for a bit so the gas gets absorbed into the beer and (c) tilt them so you don’t have to tip them at the end to get the last of the beer out. Thanks to everyone who gave us advice on this in the past few months.
Both variants of the Brooklyn/Schneider Hopfen Weisse in their beautifully designed bottles
We’ve been wanting to try this ever since we first read about it. We’ve often wondered what a hoppier Weizen would be like, and we were also intrigued by the collaboration idea. Brooklyn and Schneider worked together to produce “a blend of Bavarian craftmanship and American ingenuity”. We managed to get our paws on both the Brooklyn variant and the Schneider version, and thought it would be fun to compare the two.
Unfortunately, the Brooklyn version exploded all over our carpet. What we managed to catch looked pretty odd. It was extremely yeasty, and an odd green-yellow colour, possibly from the dry hopping. It tasted… well, pretty foul, actually. Like hop tea. We’re assuming that we got an off bottle. It was all hefe, with maybe a bit of hop dust floating around in it for good measure.
We turned back to better-behaved Schneider variant, hoping it would taste as good as it looked. It didn’t really work either, sadly. The hop flavours clash with the banana-yeast and make it quite difficult to drink — we found it rather soapy and harsh.
Nonetheless, we’d encourage people who haven’t tried it to give it a go, especially if you’ve a high tolerance for bitterness. It’s the kind of beer people will either love or hate.
Update: Boak has decided it ‘tastes like rhubarb — it makes your teeth go funny’. Make of that what you will.
A hop flower (from Wikimedia Commons, photographed by LuckyStar).
Can you drink a beer and guess which hops are in it?
We are the first to admit that we are still learning our way around beer. One thing we’ve been working on is our ability to spot varieties of hops in beer — useful when you want to brew your own version of a particular beer, or borrow some element of its flavour or aroma. Or when you want to show off to other beer geeks.
So far, we’ve got the basic stuff sorted.
But that’s about it as far as our own senses go. We usually have to resort tog to scouring the internet for expert analysis and comments from loose-lipped brewers.
If you’ve got super tastebuds and or a super nose, were you born that way? Or did you train yourself? Any tips would be much appreciated…
The back of a 53 bus, featuring the hoppy Selkent logo
Selkent is a bus company that operates routes in South London and Kent.
Sat in a traffic jam on the top deck of a bus last week, I noticed for the first time that their logo includes some lovely Kentish hops.
More evidence of beer obsession.
Bailey
We're a pair of beer geeks who live in London in the UK. Bailey is a man, Boak is a lady. We've been writing this beer blog since April 2007 and it's taken us all over Britain and Europe in pursuit of the perfect pint.
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