Anyone tried these? I have a pound coming and will make a SMASH for sure, just wondering what others have gotten out of these.
just featured in latest BYO, author talks about using them in a stout & has a recipe. Also describes as "clean grapefruit, floral, black currant notes and a spicy aroma" So basically, part Cascade, part Kent Golding, part Bullion, part Saaz
That is lifted straight from the description on hopsdirect. At least jumble the order of the descriptors. I do not have a BYO subscription so I can't read the article. Looks like you did not pen that one, sorry if you did. For some reason I usually find the descriptions of hops on the vendors websites to be useless and incorrect. I am not sure why, maybe I am just awesome or something. My order is scheduled to arrive Saturday, so I should know by Tuesday what they bring to the table.
yeah, looks like it was lifted...not sourced, shame, shame. Was more talking about that description with some level of facetiousness. maybe the hops get burned going all the way to Tajikistan. I definitely take those descriptions with a grain of salt...but find some value to them. I actually find that a suppository is the best way to get the nuances from the hop.
In the byo article master brewer Ben Roesch from Wormtown Brewery says that "depending on the beer and the amounts we get blackberries, orange, grass, and tea". Sounds like a pretty interesting variety. The byo article also mentions that this hop has been grown at Puterburgh Farms since 1963 but was just recently registered. I wonder why they waited 50 years?
I'm guessing there's a little bit of Cluster in that mix and because of that, the aroma was too potent for the years of non-craft brewers. (For the record, Cluster is usually described as Blackberries and Cat Piss)
I wish I had something interesting to report here but I cannot say that I do. I think I just got a crappy sample of these hops. The pound I got looked like a bag of shake if you know what I mean. I made and IPA but thanks to a crappy ferment from BRY-97 (perhaps the first dry yeast ever that needs a starter) the off flavors from the ferment covered anything else up. So I made a Pale Ale with my usual trusty 1968. The gravity sample at kegging tasted a lot like an unhopped starter. The hopping schedule was 1oz at 60min then 2oz at 15 and 10min. I dry hoped with 3oz, would have added more but at the point I tasted the gravity sample I had already dropped the DH bag into the keg. It is not quite a spent starter at this point but it is really too subtle to make any sort of determination. Drinkable for sure, pretty calm. Maybe some lemon, tea. Reminds me of Serebrinanka. Maybe a weak version of Bravo. Like I said I think I just got a crappy sample of these hops. Just updating the thread to finish it off with my results.
“For the record, Cluster is usually described as Blackberries and Cat Piss.” You meant blackcurrant, right? I have read the above description before and I personally do not understand it. If anybody wants to ‘taste’ Cluster hops you should drink an Anchor California Lager. That beer is solely hopped with California Cluster hops. A alternative description that I have seen published for Cluster hops is: “floral and spicy”. This description sounds more reasonable (accurate?) to me. Cheers!
