Hop Shortage

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the concept of having too much Citra.

 

Brewed the Herkules/Smaragd. Dry hopped with 100 grams of Herkules. It was undrinkable. It was soooooooo bitter that even I couldn't stand it. On the front of the tongue was a light lemon flavor, but in the bad of the tongue the bitterness was so strong, that the aftertaste ruled my tongue even an hour afterwards, and after having chewed gum. It had a noble-hops-like bitterness, which probably is from the fact that they originally were bred from noble, German or Czech hops. I think the IBUs were at least 115+.

So, what did I do,... well... the lemon flavors up front intrigued me, which led me to start thinking how to enhance that. I had just listened to a podcast from Craft Beer Radio from Shorts brewery on how they added lemon zest to enhance a beer's aroma (can't remember which one). So I cut up & blended the zest of 2 lemons, 2 limes, and the pulp of a mango (so it wouldn't be too sour) into puree, boiled that for 20 minutes and put it into the fermenter, a tirtiary fermentation, so to speak. Now... the aromas and and taste... are like Sprite/7Up with a ultra-bitter but not as strong aftertaste. The taste... not bad! Almost like a German Radler but 100 Xs fresher and zestier/tangier.

So... be very careful you don't overdo the Herkules or Smaragd in a beer, and use them like you would use more traditional noble hops, but A LOT more concentrated.

 

Wait are you talking about how the bitterness was perceived prior to fermentation being complete??

 

No, I dry hopped in secondary, then was about to bottle it, and when I siphoned it and was about to bottle it, that's when I tasted it and realized there was no way I or anyone else could drink a full bottle of the stuff.

I just started another post that gives the recipe and more info here.

 

Can you reveal you Simcoe and Warrior rhizome source? You may have been lied to. I have been searching for cuttings of the propitiatory varieties for 2 years and can't find anything.

 

Craigslist seeds?

 

I can give you anecdotal comparisons of the cascade hops I grow in my backyard (suburbs of Chicago) and cascades purchased at the LHBS....mine were horrible tasting :-)

 

I've read about people who have ordered wet hops of some of the proprietary strains and the hops often come with excess stem that contains some leaf material and they were trying to grow the plant out from that excess stem. I never read whether it was successful.

Personally I have tried growing from much healthier bine cuttings and it's not an easy task and the fail rate is quite high. I'm a terrible gardner. I was able to get a few to grow a few feet vertically but they never seemed to put out enough root mass to try planting. I was never quite sure how that tiny hop plant would grow enough over years to be large enough to produce hops. Then again, as I said, I'm a terrible gardener.

I didn't have a good year growing hops last year (didn't get any cones and barely had growth out of a few rhizomes) but each of the rhizomes from last year are already sprouting buds for our unusually warm winter (it's been upper 60s/low 70s in DFW). Hopefully I'll get a few ounces of cones to play with this fall.

 

Could have been lied to but when I got them maybe 3 years ago was told they were and I make a "Wyerbacher Double Simcoe clone " that uses 6 ozs. and it tastes like simcoe is there any thing else that could taste the same?

 

Yeah, but where did you get them? If they were real, they were stolen. Or the owner of the patent for Simcoe isn't very bright, giving a proprietary strain's rhizomes away, which I think could be considered abandonment of the patent.

Simcoe doesn't contain any types of oils that aren't also found in other hops. The proportions are different (as they are between any two varieties). So while I wouldn't expect anything else to taste exactly the same, I also would guess that even real Simcoe hops grown in PA would taste different than they would when grown in the Northwest.

 

The LHBS here in MI has almost every hop variety in stock, but it was a different story back in "08 when they were out of most everything. Talking to the folks who work there they put their foot down on how much you could buy relative to other things you were buying there. They said they had small breweries (and homebrewers) try to hoard as much as they could but the LHBS realized they would be upsetting a majority of their clients and lose business in the long run. I learned a lot when I was forced to substitute my preferred hops. Happy brewing

 

Such as?

 

Simply put I was forced to use and understand hops I have never used or heard of before.

 

How is it you have these varieties?

 

It is very likely you picked your hop too early.