What variety of Hop add's what to a beer? What flavour, bitterness etc?
I have no benchmarks here just my memory.
I will have to make extra effort to get most hops due to my location. Currently i've managed to get Sticklebract. I'm not to keen on plugs or pellets. Much rather have the flowers so i am limited. I can also get super alpha, green bullet, nelson sauvin and cascade.
But what do these actually add? What well known commercial beers have a distinct or single hop variety for me to focus on? Is there something well known and typical of Fuggles? Goldings? Challenger? Cascade? etc
As a novice brewer i find Hops the most puzzling addition. Currently just following recommendations but not neccesarily with the same hop...
This var of Hop tastes like this
-
steve_flack
You're not following recommendations then are you?Currently just following recommendations but not neccesarily with the same hop...
Cascade is the signature hop of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Most of the other SN beers are Cascade-Centennial blends.
Nelson Sauvin is supposed to add white winey character to a beer (hence the name)
Green Bullet - a bit like Styrian Goldings (floral ) IIRC it's the hop used in Steinlager. I used it as a bittering hop in a Duvel clone that came out well.
Super Alpha - never used it
The flavours and aromas of hops vary from variety to variety (and from batch to batch) so the best way to know what they do is to try them. The mathematical bitterness you can work out from the alpha acid values given. The 'quality' or smoothness of the bitterness is harder to determine although traditionally the cohumulone levels of a hop variety have been seen as a good determinant of that (low=smoother).
BTW, Plugs are just flowers compressed into a 14g brick. They are otherwise the same as whole flower hops. Pellets are more heavily processed and are made by cleaning up the hops, grinding them to dust and compressing them into pellets. Some varities (such as Saaz) with high farnesene levels pellet badly and loose aroma, but once hops are pelletised they keep better than whole hops.
-
Martin the fish
