My wife and I just finished bottling our Chinook Bomb, its a SMaSH brew consisting of 8 lbs Maris Otter and 14 oz of Chinook hop cones. The hops were grown by a friend of ours, who also happens to be an excellent brewer. The batch recipe was designed for 3 gallons but, needless to say, 14 oz of hop cones will absorb a significant amount of wort, kind of a hop sponge in the kettle. So, after topping up we ended up with 2.5 gallons or so. And I must say its palatable, not as harsh as one would expect, sure there's a high level of bitterness however, the malty biscuit character of the Maris Otter makes its presence known. There's strong pine, grapefruit notes and good hop flavor, all in all not a terrible experiment. Shortly I'm going to try the same recipe with about 10 oz of Cascade hop cones grown by our friend. Cheers.
