How do You Distinguish Different Hop/Malt Varieties?

Try checking out some single hopped beers. They are brewed with only one type of hop, allowing for close examination of that varietals individual flavors. Mikkeler has a ton of these, Terrapins So Fresh and So Green Green is made with a different hop each time. CCB has both a Victoria Secret (thats the hop's name) and an IPA made with all Mosiac hops. Im pretty sure that Zombie dust is all Citra...
Anyways, lots of breweries are making these brews. Just do a little research and then hunt the beers down and try them. Try a couple side by side and really pay attention to the nuances. Just keep in mind that drinking a bunch of IPAs back-to-back-to-back will wreck your palate, so keep some crackers or water around.
Or just mix in a sour as a palate cleanser.
cheers!

 

I second the single hop beers. Also there are single malt beers. Finally, try homebrewing. It will completely change the way you look at beer.

 

So far as malts go, i find them a bit trickier. Check out the BJCP guidelines to see what types of malt are typically used in particular styles, then find some of the commercial examples that they list. Follow the same procedure you would do when tasting for hops.

 

I do not care, I care what the beer tastes like TBH. I like to judge the whole beer, not its parts.
That said you can tell some hops apart , but malts not really. You can guess, or you can check the brewers web site and hope they are honest! I assume 99.99% are accurate but recipes do change and sometimes web sites do not update themselves.lol

do you understand?

 

A friend came back from Australia earlier in the year, and said that the hop formally known as Victoria Secret had to have a name change due to a Cease and Desist from a women's lingerie company.

 

boooo..... i kinda figured something like that might happen. everything is so litigious now.

 

Totally agree about the home brewing - having the ingredients to smell and taste really helps if you want to learn the differences. If you don't want to brew, maybe visit a home brew shop and get some sample amounts - this would help with the grains, not so easy (or cheap) to do with hops. There's also a bunch of internet tables compiling hops and flavor profiles - check those out.

 

I love this chart:

 

Marris Otter malt = J.W. Lees Harvest Ale or North Coast Old Stock Ale.

Can't think of any other single-malt beers off the top of my head, it's more common in homebrewing (SMSH or "Single Malt, Single Hop" beers). Pretty sure Traquair's House Ale is single-malt but I have no idea what the malt is, and the one bottle I've tried probably wasn't the best example (it tasted like carbonated dirt).

 

If you tasted Saaz next to Cascade you'd absolutely notice a difference. Try focusing on various hop families North American, European, and English. Spend a few days drinking Bohemian Pilsners and then switch to to an American Pale Ale - you'll start to see it.

Keep in mind that being able to distinguish separate hops from a beer with multiple hop additions is extremely difficult. IMHO, someone telling you that they know a beer is hopped with Cascade, Willamette, Columbus, and Magnum simply off taste is blowing smoke. Describing a North American hop profile, however, is much more realistic.