Seeing as Hops Direct doesn't do Simcoe and I didn't find out about Farmhouse Brewing's release until too late I was wondering if there is anywhere else where you can get cheap 4 oz or 1# bags of Simcoe? I have never tried this hop, and man do I ever want to...
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/Search.aspx?k=simcoe probably not the cheapest, but they are available and 2012
Simcoe t'ain't cheap nowhere this year. Kennywood has 'em (Amarillo...too) for $25# http://www.kennywoodbrew.com/thumbnail.asp?offset=0&deep=1&cid=27
The best APA I've made is primarly simcoe and cintinnial with summit as a bittering hop. Amarillo plays nicely with these guys too. Simcoe's great stuff, but some people find it a little catty.
I'm don't think I get catty from it, but I do taste a sort of strange artificial sweetener flavor (almost, but not quite like and underattenuated taste) from it. Or at least every time I have tasted this taste in a beer, it turned out to contain Simcoe. I suppose it could be something else, since these were not my beers and I don't know all the details in most cases of how they were made. But it's enough for me that I'm not going to risk using it in any of my batches.
I really like Weyerbacher's Double Simcoe Ipa. The description on their site says it the only hop used.
BA koopa has posted in the past: “For a high alpha acid hop, Simcoe is relatively low in cohumulone and can give you nice pineapple and/or pine notes mainly depending on which farm it was sourced from.” When I have homebrewed with Simcoe I have tasted the pine notes so I guess I have been getting Simcoe hops sourced from the farm that produces piney Simcoe hops? I have brewed an all Simcoe hopped IPA and that was very tasty. Last year I brewed a Simcoe/Amarillo hopped IPA (my attempts to clone Alpine Duet) and that beer was very tasty. I recently brewed a Simcoe/Zythos IPA (I substituted Zythos for the Amarillo which I couldn’t obtain); I will be bottling this batch this weekend. Simcoe is a tasty hop! Cheers! P.S. My last (recent) purchase of Simcoe hops was from Williams Brewing.
I believe that Simcoe has migrated a bit from spruce notes with some cattiness to more pine and tropical fruit. Only my subjective impressions of course.
Farmhouse brewing supply has em, 2lb limit per customer (2012 batch). These guys are nice to work with, recommended.
