Identifying Hops

Or maybe I want to see if I can turn Bud Light into a decent Czech Pils on the cheap!

 

Sorachi Ace?

 

I think you are referring to Sorachi Ace.

It is my understanding that they are now ‘sourced’ from farms in the US.

http://www.brew-dudes.com/sorachi-ace-hops/790

Cheers!

 

*snicker* yes, that one!

I called it lemon pledge and you named it.

Gawd that hop shortage of 2008, that was a long while ago, but it motivated me to get way the heck better about growing, storing, drying, and sealing my hops. And, to unfortunate substitutions at the lhbs. bramling cross... oh the indignity.

 

homebrewing helped me get a lot of them recognized. i can do a pretty fair amount of american hop varieties now.... noble hops and European stuff on the other hand is a little tougher to me

 

I'm okay-at-best at picking up on Citra, but that's about as good as it gets

 

Start homebrewing

 

Saaz is not German, but from on the Zatec region of the Czech Republic.

There are more English varieties than Fuggles and Goldings. Challenger, Target, and Northdown come to mind. Coniston Bluebird bitter is all Challenger, and it is very nice.

 

Here are some suggestions from me for easy to find beers that show case a particular hop:

Oskar Blues G'night is the epitome of amarillo (yes, there is columbus and simcoe in there, but, the amarillo is dry hopped and comes through strongly)
Bells Two Hearted for Centennial
Sierra Nevada Pale ale for cascade
Anchor steam for Northern brewer
Pilsner Urquell for the saaz
Stone Arrogant bastard for chinook to get a sense of the terroir, compare to Lakefront IPA. (which I do keep suggesting...)

 

Citra, Mosaic, Cascade, Saaz, Sorachi Ace and Galaxy I can pick up on. Citra the most since my girlfriend bought me Citra hop oil chapstick. It offends my students, but they can't figure out the source of the smell. I however could smell that for days.

 

Also what was the prominent hop in Victory Hop Ranch? The smell was dank as hell, but it tasted like white grape juice. Crazy stuff.

 

Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic, and actually Amarillo. That last one is just a pine bomb with an assault of bitterness. Kind of like how vanilla stands out to me, it just does.

Once youve had Zombie Dust, Citra will be clear to you forever.

It changes with each release. The newest one makes me think it was some offshoot of Sorachi Ace and Azzaca.

 

The hops in Hop Ranch are Mosaic and Azacca.

I also pick up dank in Hop Ranch and my guess is that it comes from the Azacca hops. I homebrew with Mosaic and that hop is consistently fruity to my palate.

http://www.victorybeer.com/beers/hop-ranch/

Cheers!

 

I find it pretty funny some of the ones people are saying are "easy" to identify:

• Mosaic can taste like anything, from blueberry to mango to stone fruit - that's how it got the name; a mosaic of flavors.
• Simcoe can range from delicate passionfruit to almost obnoxiously catty pine, depending of how it's used.
• Amarillo is mostly citrus which a skilled brewery can reproduce with hops like Centennial. (I know one brewery that redid the recipe of their flagship during the Amarillo shortage a few years ago, subbing in Summit, and nobody noticed!)

Take it from the experienced brewers in this thread: thinking you can identify hops for sure just by taste is a fools' errand unless you're drinking single hop beers.

 

That is an excellent post!

When you factor in that single hop varieties can significantly vary (your example of Simcoe above), even when drinking single hopped beers it is not always an easy task to identify the specific hop.

Cheers!

 

yeah, and I'm going to throw this out too, some individuals are genetically predisposed to have better tasters (it's often women), there's this whole women taste citra differently controversy, which I totally believe.

AFM, I've NEVER been wrong in identifying amarillo and simcoe. YMMV.

 

“yeah, and I'm going to throw this out too, some individuals are genetically predisposed to have better tasters (it's often women),” I hear that all the time from my wife. I have zero idea whether it is truly a ‘fact’ that women are generally ‘better’ tasters but there is no doubt in my mind that she has a more perceptive palate than I do; the ‘challenge’ is that she utilizes a non-standard vocabulary for her tastes descriptions.

“…there's this whole women taste citra differently controversy, which I totally believe.” The ‘issue’ with Citra is that it has a relatively high amount of a compound of 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one (otherwise referred to as 4MMP). Some folks (including many women) are genetically predisposed to perceive high levels of 4MMP as having a flavor described as cat pee. Other folks (like me) perceive 4MMP as having a flavor of tropical fruits. A couple (husband and wife) that I am friends with both drank my Citra IPA and both of them perceived cat pee in that beer. I have a difficult time associating somebody perceiving Citra hops aroma/flavor as being cat pee as being ‘better’ tasters.

Cheers!

 

I wouldn't say that to someone Czech. Don't think they'd be very happy about their beloved hop variety being described as German.

 

What's funny is that I typed out European at first but didn't want some smart ass pointing out that England is in Europe! I just got sloppy and hurried in my response. Nice to see a little national pride behind hops though!

 

Yeah I should go back and correct that. I have been going to Milwaukee's German fest, and they have these German heritage descent maps, and they're *cough* quite expansive.