The "Dank"

My colleagues all agrred that Sierra Nevada's Ber Camp Tropical IPA from last year tasted literally like it had been infused with pot, and not tropical at all, so with whatever they put in there, that's what I call a dank beer.

 

With you on Knee Deep, lost me on Breaking Bud. Simtra is maybe the dankest beer I've ever had, but BB just doesn't do it for me. Maybe I haven't had a fresh enough bottle/can, but I always give it another shot, hoping to be impressed, and it tastes not much better than iced tea.

 

This beer here is definitely a good definition of DANK.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16386/46670/

PS: Its not retired, they just didn't brew it last year for the 1st time.

 

to me, dank = NZ hops. Nelson is the closest thing to nuggage I've smelled and tasted.

 

95% of Trillium's hoppy beers have a Columbus back bone, and not all of their beers have "dank" taste notes, Cutting Tiles series being one of the only ones I can think of that does not utilize columbus.

 

I am not sure what the term "back bone' means here. Trillium uses some Columbus when they brew Fort Point Pale Ale but that beer is absolutely dominated by Citra hops.

Cheers!

 

It all depends on the grower and season. I think it's too common that people associate hop varieties with specific flavors. I've had Mosaic that tasted like rotten blueberries and I've had it taste like fruit punch. Last time I brought this up, someone mentioned that the more rare, proprietary varieties are less susceptible to variation, but recently I got Amarillo from a supplier that I would have sworn was EKG when I opened it up. I sent the hops back and they were replaced with some of the best Amarillo I've ever smelled, just like red grapefruit juice... Same supplier, different lots. Another similar example was Chinook that I had on a hop contract smelled like black pepper. I hated it and rejected over 1,000 lbs of hops that I had contracted for. I ended up buying Chinook from Hop Head Farms where they seem to have perfected their soil conditions to give the most amazing, intense pineapple aroma that I have got from any hop.

Normally brewers buy blends of hop lots so that the variability is lessened because they all tend to average out, but this can also result in lower quality hops as well.

 

I think "dank" is a B.S. descriptor more often than not, in which most cases it can be more accurately and more eloquently described as earthy, grassy, or piney. However, there are a few beers and hops described as such that fit the bill, such as Stone Enjoy By; and Simcoe hops more than anything.

 

IPAs I have had that are dank to me:

Born Yesterday (and Again)
Hop Hunter
Founder's Harvest
Orderville

might have to start trying looking out for fresh Knee Deep based on a couple comments here

 

Weedy, the ‘challenge’ is that hop smell from the bag can be very different from the hop aroma/flavor in the resulting beer. A recent example: I brewed an Equinox (now called Ekuanot) IPA and those hops were extremely pungent smelling. I was a bit concerned when I brewed this beer. The resulting beer is glorious with a very different aroma/flavor profile as compared to the ‘raw’ hops.

How do you know when to reject hops simply based on smell? Did you have brewing experiences akin to the one I detailed above?

Cheers!

P.S. I have brewed a number of beers feturing Mosaic hops and all of those beers featured berry fruit flavors. I had a batch of Founders Mosaic Promise once that was very dank.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-sunday-week-579.400428/#post-4636629

 

Tomato is a cousin of hops too, no tomato love?

 

I didn't knew either what 'dank' exactly meant, but now i think i do.
So, thanks for the info, BA'ers.

 

tomatoes are part of the nightshade family. eggplant, potatoes are cousins. bell peppers and chilies are also related. i think those are quite some distance to the Cannabaceae cousins, which are cannabis, celtis (hackberries), and our beloved humulus

source: wikipedia

 

It is a bit of a challenge, but now with 5+ years of experience it is getting to be a lot easier. I am a little bit of a thorn in the side of our hop suppliers because when I find lots that I like, I start asking them to give me the same lot everytime. Being that I don't have contracts in our first year of brewing here, that can be difficult.

A lot of new brewers/drinkers will smell a bag of hops next to another one and not be able to distinguish much of a difference, if any at all. I'm sure I was that same way when I first started brewing. In fact, at Blue Pants I did my first ever lot selection at the time of the Cascade harvest and I asked my assistant, the owners, and packaging employees to smell each of them. I thought the differences between the 4 lots we were sampling was enormous. To me, one of them smelled spicy, another smelled floral, one smelled like cardboard, and I don't remember the 4th lot. I was looking for the most floral Cascade I could find because I knew that the floral aroma would persist just a little bit in the final product and that the citrusy aroma would come out more after fermentation.

Around that time I was preparing a presentation for the Southern Brewer's Conference that involved a theory of mine about achieving a "complete" hop aroma (essentially, how to get every possible flavor compound from individual hop varieties) and testing methods for the theoretical "aroma unit", similar to bitterness units, but for aroma. I had always been disappointed in every Cascade purchase I had made because they never had the classic Sierra Nevada (for whom I have a huge amount of respect) Cascade flavor/aroma. I thought that for SNPA to have as much floral quality as it has and as much orange flavor as it does that their hops must be high in geraniol, so I picked the lot that smelled intensely floral in an attempt to get a similar Cascade flavor to their's. I was the only one at Blue Pants that had that as my favorite lot with most of the others with me saying the differences were subtle, while I thought the differences were huge. Afterwards, we found out that lot won the 2016 Cascade Cup.

So basically, the answer to your question is that you have to practice trying to distinguish the different aromas, learning what flavors come out and which flavors go away when brewed, and you have to know what you're looking for from each variety. With the Amarillo I mentioned I rejected, that lot was just not a strong enough aroma and the supplier told me after the fact that the oil content was very low compared to what I'm used to with Amarillo. The HSI was suspiciously low as well, which made me guess that the farmer harvested the lot too early.

 

Just once I want to see pedantic replies on BA.

 

I get that hops from differing lots will produce differing aromas from the raw hops but how do you 'project' how these hops will present themselves in the finished beer? Maybe the lot that smells like cardboard when raw will produce a tasty beer?

I am assuming that when you stated "you" in this statement you are referring to the general sense of the word "you". As a homebrewer I have zero ability to reject lots and get differing lots in exchange. My online vendors will not do this for me and if I got to my LHBS and start tearing open packages of hops to sniff them they will promptly inform me that I just bought those hops.

Cheers!

 

Nice post, I'm not a home Brewer so il take your word for it, it must be hard as hell for hoppy beers to be consistent batch to batch.

 

HAHA, sorry for the confusion, yes I did mean "you" in the general sense.

Knowing what the different hop flavors you'll get from the different aromas comes from experience. That cardboard character, some people describe as being Woody or Tobacco as well. Those are characteristics I might want if I was using Northern Brewer, but not Cascade. Sticking with the Cascade example, I wanted a little bit of floral aroma in the finished beers, but the main flavor I was after was citrus. Rather than selecting the most citrusy Cascade I could find, I knew that a hop that is high in geraniol would undergo bio-transformation to beta-citronella. For the most part though, aromas do stick around through the whole brewing process, even if other aromas become prevalent. Or in the case of the Amarillo, I could smell that the hops were not as aromatic as they should be, an observation that was confirmed after the fact with a gas chromatograph analysis of the oil content. Had I brewed our IPA with them, I still may have had similar flavor characteristics, but the intensity wouldn't have been there. The other indicator of subpar hops that I'd assume that you've experienced in your own brewing is the "cheesy/sweaty" aroma from oxidized hops.

 

Weedy, thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I will once again bring up: “A recent example: I brewed an Equinox (now called Ekuanot) IPA and those hops were extremely pungent smelling. I was a bit concerned when I brewed this beer. The resulting beer is glorious with a very different aroma/flavor profile as compared to the ‘raw’ hops.”

If I could exchange those hops based upon the aroma of those raw hops I would have. And if I did that I would have made a HUGE mistake from a final beer perspective since the beer that resulted from those pungent hops were not pungent whatsoever and instead had very different and pleasing (for my palate) aromas/flavors.

I personally do not understand how the aroma of raw hops can be predictive of how these hops will manifest aromas/flavors in the finished beers. If you ever publish something on: “…a theory of mine about achieving a "complete" hop aroma (essentially, how to get every possible flavor compound from individual hop varieties) and testing methods for the theoretical "aroma unit", similar to bitterness units, but for aroma.” please let me know because I would be interested in reading about this. Hopefully you will have some results from scientific experimentation to corroborate your theory.

It is always a genuine pleasure communicating with you.

Cheers!

Jack

 

Dank to me means straight up weed smell. Sometimes it's fresh green and sometimes cannabutter. But it's gotta smell and taste like bud, and the brewery that does that the most for me is Lawson's Finest Liquids.

Their small batch draft beers really tend to hit that note, especially their Idaho 7. Man, do I love that beer.