Identifying Hops

Ok, so I conducted my experiment this past weekend.


I used Apollo, Summit, Bravo, Willamette, Glacier and Ahtanum. This gave me an equal split of low and high alpha acid hops.

I used a rather simple means of introducing the hops to the Bud Light - simply cut the corner off each bag and dribbled about 7 pellets in for each bottle . Since I was investigating each hop on it's own merit, exact pellet count was not a concern between the different bottles. Now if hop combination or same hops introduced into different beers were the point, more care would have existed in "the dribble ".

For safety sake I placed the bottles in the center of a casserole container in case any hops got loose (hops are poison to dogs and I had a few curious canines circling ).

So I noticed straight away that between the two, the low alpha acid hops created the most violent reaction upon dropping into the beer. Straight up Vesuvius. High alpha acid hops, barely a peep.

I labeled each Bud Light (now I finally feel like those white scratch a message labels they had actually served a purpose), snugged the cap back on and left them at room temp for roughly 84 hours before placing them in the fridge for about 108 hours.

So here is what I got from each:

Apollo - dandelion, onion, flowers and overall, a little dank.
Ahtanum - floral, minerals, light clay
Summit - rubber, onion, very dank
Glacier - floral, tart, mineral, grassy
Willamette - rubber, onion, hay
Bravo - piney, citrus, green tea, mint

A few side notes. First, although they tended to be on the flat side, the resulting liquid was actually drinkable. Ever leave some beer, like an APA or IPA in a growler for a day longer than you should have? That's what they were like. Secondly, the hops actually turned the Bud Light into a full on weak APA. Imagine an underwhelming offering from "X" brewery - that's what they came out like.

I will likely do this again but not for a little while.

Thank you @JackHorzempa for the inspiration and thank you @LehighAce06 for the interest in seeing how this turned out!

 

@gopens44

Firstly, thanks for publishing the results of your experiment.

FWIW, your impressions of the hops that I have familiarity with via homebrewing are fairly consistent with what you have reported.

The two hops of Apollo and Summit have reputations for having ‘different’ flavors like dank and onion-like. I noted that this reputation is consistent with your palate.

I also took note from that other thread your comment of: “While I did this on purpose to further understand what each hop imparts, it made me a little sad to think how little thought some many breweries put into their IPA recipes. Hop, hop and more hop but not too much thought in depth and character.”

To hopefully add some perspective here, you dry hopped an AAL beer (which should be thin/watery) with hops and as to be expected they did indeed have the quality of ‘hop water’. It is unfortunate that you have experience in drinking IPAs which have a less than pleasing malt backbone. I have experienced similar things with the ‘new’ Session IPAs but for the commercial IPAs that I drink I have not had this experience. All of the IPAs that I purchase have sufficient malt backbones to provide some balance to the hops but I generally purchase ‘better’ IPAs (e.g., Union Jack, Stone IPA, Two Hearted, etc.). An IPA should not be anything like a dry hopped Bud Light; that is indeed a sign of poor brewing practice if that occurs.

Cheers!

 

One should recap the beers with a capper to seal out O2 and keep as much CO2 in.
No wonder the beers were flat, maybe a little stale too?

 

Very nice report. Thanks for following through on the discussion and trying this out. If, after reflection, you come up with any other observations about lessons learned I'm sure several of us would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

 

Home brewing has definitely helped me identify hops by taste. Im certainly not an expert. I think aroma is also identifiable. The really interesting ones are the pellet hops that are actually a blend of different strains.

 

You're wrong, Jack, it's a snap to identify those hops. All you have to do is read the label.

 

Not too stale, but the any stale qualities would have been masked by the hop wallop IMO. As for capping them, I had my capper out and caps sanitized, but in a "duh" moment, realized that Bud Light were screw tops. Thought crossed my mind to drop the hop pellets in empty and sanitized bottles that I could cap, but figured that I'd still be losing most of the carbonation from transferring the beer from bottle to bottle.

As it turned out, the only bottle that didn't "pisshhh" with at least some carbonation was the Willamette bottle. That one was the worst of all when it came to gushing upon pellet introduction.

@drtth - In my original posting on the experiment I didn't include a few thoughts I had during the experiment but decided to nix, such as the capped bottle dilemma described above. Another thought I had was to fashion tea bags with pellets instead of dropping them in, but I considered the introduction of yet another item that may not be completely sanitized as an unnecessary danger. As a result, the only bottle that I had a real problem with (as far as hops being too mushy and eager to leave the vessel) was again, Willamette. Mainly because I capped it off as soon as I could since it was losing carbonation by the second. What resulted was a ton of hop goo in the neck.

If and when I do this again, I will knock out the high alpha acid bottles as I did, but go slower with low alphas. Maybe a pellet or two and let it subside. I was too concerned over losing carbonation that I just wanted to cap the things off ASAP but I should probably slow it down next time.

Unrelated to the test (insofar as the community is concerned probably) - I was able to give an impromptu hop lesson to my wife and kids. They see me with all these different beers but have never fully understood why they are different. I allowed everyone an opportunity to smell each hop and tell me what they could get from them. Didn't take long for them to make the connection between hops and herbs, as far as how they give different tastes. Both kids are way into cooking and my son enjoys "finer" items already (signature blend coffee roasts, darker the better; "craft" sodas, "foodie" style items like salmon, etc.,. at restaurants...) so this little experiment was something they certainly appreciated. But no, they didn't drink any of it.....

 

Thanks for sharing this. I sent it to a friend that was gifted with some coors light

 

Awesome! Sounds like a great family event!!

I would strongly suggest to other who may be interested doing this sort of experiment is to purchase light beers with screw off and resealable caps. This eliminates the need for a capper and ensures complete closure of the bottle (mitigates loss of carbonation).

Cheers!