'Catnip'/mint hop note

I have picked up on a minty, almost wintergreen like note in several of Dogfish Head beers. I was never sure if it was the hops or the house yeast.

 

When I read your first post I thought mosaic, which taste slightly herbal and minty to me... but that wouldn't explain the Finback IPA. But as @cavedave mentioned different people taste different things. If you know you detected that mint/catnip flavor in one of those beers, I would recommend trying some single hop beers with those hops. Founder's has the Mosaic promise and Centennial IPA, which are single hop beers that are relatively easy to find. I can't think of an easy to find Chinook single hop beer, but if you can rule out Centennial and Mosaic, and Chinook was in both of the beers you tasted mint/catnip, that might be your answer.

 

We like to codify things here. That includes ascribing specific flavors to specific hop varieties. In addition to different people picking up on different things from the same hop, we should probably keep in mind that one Chinook isn't always going to be the same as every other Chinook even if there are typical flavors associated with it. Time of the harvest, where it's grown, how it's processed, vitality of the plant, how long it's been stored, etc... I would think that all of these things can create big differences within varieties (and then there's also how it's used in brewing). So while it's certainly possible that a specific hop variety provides a minty taste, I would think that rules need to be applied more loosely from the consumer POV than what we'd ideally want.