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.
Citrusy American hops are easy to spot.
Goldings often make a beer smell of oranges.
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…
