This post was written by our resident Hop Head, Josh
Howard. Josh has written a couple guests posts, and is keen on writing
as part of his Hop Series. This is his first official, non-guest, post.
Welcome to the team Josh!
Ahoy, hop lovers! As
we hit the end of summer and head into fall, a young brewer’s thoughts turn only
to one thing…fresh hop harvests. Yes,
the fresh hop beers are coming. Last
weekend Pikes Peak Brewing held a hop harvest party and has a batch of America the Pale (and Beautiful) in the
works. They certainly are not the only
ones picking and brewing, as I have seen breweries nationwide posting on their
Facebook and Twitter pages about their seasonal fresh hop ales. Full Sail’s Fresh Hop Pilsner is using hundreds of pounds of minutes-off-the-bine
Cascade hops, and Surly’s Wet! uses
800 lbs. of Cascade and 600 lbs. of Centennial hops that arrived at the brewery
within 15 hours of being picked in Michigan. Great Divide in Denver will soon have their Fresh Hop IPA available as
well, which is using Colorado grown Centennial hops as pictured below.
The article that Josh wrote about Mosaic hops and this post from Beervana about the new breed of fruity hops has got me thinking a lot about the term "hoppy" and what it means. In the Beervana link, Jeff makes the observation that even though Deschutes puts 60 IBUs on the bottle of their Fresh Squeezed IPA, the beer does not come off as bitter at all, it's rather sweet.
***UPDATE see below
I've been thinking about the term "hoppy." When you say a beer is hoppy, everyone knows immediately what you mean. We can expect some fantastic hop aroma and flavor, ranging from spicy to grassy to grapefruity to evergreen-like to quite recently (and extremely unfortunately) cat-pissy.
This post is part of a new column on hops by local hop head Josh Howard. Josh has been homebrewing since 2003 and while he is a hop head to the core, he's also a big fan of sour beers. And he also likes cats.
It is an interesting time to be a ‘hop head.’ We hop heads are the beer drinkers and enthusiasts who enjoy their beer hoppy; ones who prefer the IPA or pale ale to the sweet and malty reds and ambers of the beer spectrum. Frankly, there may have never been a better time to be a hop head in the history of beers, brewing, and drinking. I don’t want to make that statement too lightly, but when you consider the new hop varieties being developed; the research that goes into flavor and aroma in beer; and the cavalier brewers charging headlong into the fore of featuring these new hops in their beer portfolios…well, it’s an exciting time to say the least.
The Changing Hop Landscape
The landscape is changing from the piney and resinous beasts we have traditionally enjoyed as IPAs and their larger imperial brethren to also include new hop strains that lend more fruity and complex notes to beer. That’s not to say that the former is going away, but rather the complexity and choices are becoming greater, and that bodes well for consumers. I’d also go so far to say that we will likely see some modifications to beer judging categories and types as a result of the new complexity.
A prominent new player on the scene of ‘sweet’ hops is Mosaic. You may have encountered it locally in Pikes Peak Brewing’s Mosaic Pale Ale, where the hop was featured in a ‘single hop’ style, meaning that no other hops were used in the making of that beer. Mosaic was also featured in their massive hop bomb, Incline IPA, which reigned in at 185 IBUs. We'll talk more about Mosaic in a moment.
An IBU Tangent
I feel it necessary to pause here and talk about IBUs. IBUs refer to International Bittering Units, and it is a means to measure the concentration of isomerized alpha acids (the essential oils from the hops) in the beer, as well as the total bitterness of it. Higher IBU numbers represent additional bitterness. From a brewer’s perspective, you can calculate the IBUs based on the amount and type of hops you use while boiling the beer using a formula for ‘hop utilization’, and arrive at a total number to rate the relative bitterness of a brew. Now here is where things get tricky: there are three different formulae for calculating IBUs, hop storage and age can impact bitterness calculations, and higher malt quantity will reduce the impact of bittering. All of these factors lead to stark variations, as evidenced by professional labs testing the same beers and often coming up with wildly different results from lab to lab.
That’s just the technical difficulties! Even your palate will play tricks on you when it comes to bitterness. That 185 IBU ‘hop bomb’ from Pikes Peak, was actually far less bitter tasting than other beers with a lower IBU number. How can that be, you might ask? A recent article about hops in Draft Magazine shows that beer will realistically hold only around 100 IBUs, and that our palate likely only tops out around 50 IBUs, so anything beyond that could probably be considered a waste, right? Wrong! Aroma and flavor can trick you into experiencing additional bitterness. The interplay of hops and the flavors they impart can steer you towards green pastures, or towards citrus or stone fruit trees, or even into the berry bushes. Hops contribute so much flavor differentiation that a brewer could brew the exact same beer numerous times with the same grain bill, same water, same methods, but change up the hop additions slightly each time and you’d be hard pressed to know they were essentially the same recipe.
The Mosaic Hop
Getting back off the IBU tangent, what we really want to look at here is the Mosaic hop, how it’s being used, and who is using it.
The Mosaic hop variety is a trademark name for hop variety HBC 369 cv developed and released in 2012 by Hop Breeding Company LLC. It is considered an aroma hop by definition, but as we’ve mentioned, it has been used in single hop applications by certain brewers. It is the ‘offspring’ of Simcoe and Nugget hops, and it lends complex fruit, floral, tropical and earthy notes to beer. Some have described the tastes and armoas it imparts as being reminiscent of mango, stone fruit, citrus, blueberry, and earthy pine.
I know in my personal experience with enjoying the Mosaic Pale Ale from Pikes Peak Brewing last fall I definitely got a blueberry finish to the beer. I can contrast that experience with Deschutes Brewing’s Fresh Squeezed IPA where Mosaic was paired with Citra hops. I have very recently enjoyed this beer. I still get the tropical fruit notes from the Mosaic in Fresh Squeezed, especially in the aroma of the beer. The aroma just as it is poured is fresh mango and a hint of citrus, but more of the earthy pine and citrus characteristics of Mosaic is present in the taste; though we can very likely attribute some of this flavor to the Citra hops as well. I really enjoyed this beer, finding it very drinkable and can say without exception that I am really enjoying every experience I have had with the Mosaic hop variety thus far.
Brewers shared their opinion of Mosaic with us as well: Cam O’Connor from Deschutes told us that he’s a big fan, and has been running test brews with it for the past 3 years, and was happy to be able to use it commercially last year when it became widely available. Cam likes it’s aroma characteristics for their strength and ability to remain prominent when used in their beers. Many of these same sentiments were shared by Chris Wright from Pikes Peak Brewing, who professed his love of the hop, and desire to use it again. Jason Wiedmaier of Lone Tree Brewing Company recently used it in their American ESB they were pouring at the Salida Brewer’s Rendezvous.
Our readers expressed a strong preference for the hop as well. In a not-at-all scientific poll conducted on Twitter, you told us in a 7 to 2 margin that you prefer Mosaic over Cascade hops. Though honestly…that’s a bit like a parent trying to choose between their two children; you love them both for different reasons, right?
I encourage everyone to seek out opportunities to try this hop. It’s a different and pleasant experience for beer lovers of all palates, not simply the hop heads. If you can find it on shelves the Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA is still available and a worthy experience. Lone Tree may still have their American ESB available; and hopefully we’ll see another Mosaic enhanced beer from Pikes Peak in the near future as well.
Till the next hoppy but not bitter installment in the hop series..cheers!
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The Vail Big Beers Festival is like an extension of the holiday season. The holidays are always a beautiful time of the year, I look forward to them, I love traveling to see my family, I love the food, the smell of the Christmas tree, I love partying with friends on New Year's Eve, and I love that in my life time seems to slow down a bit. Luckily, when it's all over you still have this festival to look forward to, as it usually takes place within two weeks of the new year. I've attended the festival for three years in a row now, I've proclaimed loudly that it is my favorite festival, and each year I look back and cherish the two-three days I spent in Vail.
Many people call the "Commercial Tasting" the main event of the festival. This is much like other festivals where breweries set up their booths and pour small samples of beer. At this festival all the beer is over 8% and a lot of it is really specialty and hard to get stuff. But for me, this commercial tasting is not the sole reason I attend, nor is it the main event in my mind. Instead there is a diffusion of main events, multiple educational seminars, outstanding beer dinners, a gigantic mountain for skiing, and a good chance to catch up with friends from other places. These are all the "main events" of Vail Big Beers.
In two entire years, this is the first out-of-state beer that I've talked formally about on the blog, that I've reviewed, if you can call this a review. Lately I've bought a few Full Sail Wreck the Halls and I can't get enough of it. I've been craving hoppy beers this season for some reason and this one has satisfied these urgings. I actually haven't craved hoppy beers since the 2009 Fresh Hop festival in Hood River, OR, which happens to be where Full Sail is located. The festival features a high concentration of fresh hop beers from Oregon and Washington. I was so excited to be there but after a handful of samples I could no longer taste or smell any of the beers that there were there. After an hour I went to Double Mountain Brewing down the street and ordered my favorite beer, the India Red Ale, and I couldn't taste that one either. A bit too much lupulin in one day I suppose. For at least a year I almost never ordered an IPA and I've grown to seriously dislike IPAs and 2IPAs that are so-called balanced out with caramel malts because they can be grossly sweet to me.
I'll be making a big leap in this post...On my way to work the other day I was listening to a Science Friday podcast, as I always do on my way to work, and the topic of the 'psychology of sadism' came up. Steven Pinker, author of the book Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, was talking about torture, that during certain ages even though people have an aversion to torture, if they saw it enough they would begin to develop a taste for it "and they positively craved it." He goes on to say, "We have reason to think from the studies of the psychology of sadism that even though we're born with an aversion to causing direct physical harm to someone with our bare hands...It's kind of like the aversion to eating strong spicy food or fear of heights. You start out with that fear, but once you master it, it can become a source of sophisticated pleasure."
I know I'm making a huge, gigantic, really wild leap here but I was wondering if the same might be true of very bitter foods, including bitter hops in beer? (I told you it would be a big leap). I know many people who were extremely turned off by beer that was lopsidedly bitter, however at some point it's like they flipped a switch, turned on the light bulb, and now bitter beers are about the only things they'll let pass through their system. Bittering hops temporarily demolish your palette but so many people have specific hops that they like more than others. Some have preferences of lemony, grapefruit, earth, piney, or even spicey hops. Some people love beers that have complex hop aromas and flavors. But I'll say it again, a huge amount of people I know had a strong initial aversion to bitter and hoppy beers. I'm curious what the psychology of sado lupulinism would look like?
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I recently read this article from Triple Pundit about a new organic law coming in 2013 that will require organic beers to have organic hops. Now, if I remember correctly, currently all that is required for a beer to be considered organic is that 95% of the product has to be organic. Hops, which definitely don't constitute over 5% of any beer (except for maybe Mikkeler's 1000 IBU beer) have not been a part of the organic factor.
I wonder how this new law will change things for breweries? I'm thinking of Laurelwood Brewing who has a few organic beers and Hopworks who makes all their beers organic. I'm curious if they've been using organic hops this whole time. I imagine not, from what I've heard it is extremely difficult to grow hops without pesticides because the bugs love them as much as we do. During the Rocky Mountain Microbrewing Symposium we heard from Frank Stonaker of the CSU Hopyard Project and Summit Plant Labs that he was looking into starting to grow organic hops soon. According to CSU Specialty Crops Program a survey in 2009 was conducted of 33 Colorado breweries, thirty of them wanted to grow their own hops and over half the group was interested in organic hops. In 2004 the Specialty Crops Program test planted several varieties of organic hops which they harvested in 2007 and published some results on their site. Also according to the site, in 2008 there were only 100 acres of organic hops in Colorado.
Will we see the price of organic beers go up? Will breweries stop making organic beers or will this push the industry? Will we as homebrewers have more access to organic hops? Try asking for organic hops now at your local homebrew store, they'd probably laugh. Here's an anecdote, I called up the Brew Hut near Denver to ask if they had a specific kind of malt in an organic version, they said no, and then proceeded to tell me that it doesn't make much of a difference anyway, that the chemicals used on non-organic barley doesn't make that much of a difference...Well, I know that's not true. And I'm going to look that up the types of pesticides involved just as soon as I get home, and I'll report back, but I just wanted to get this post off today while I'm inspired.
Well I decided to wait a few days to publish this post, so that I could ask a few breweries about this new organic situation. Generally, my questions went something like this, "I just read in this article that in 2013 they are changing the organic laws for beers and hops will now have to be organic as well. I'm curious how it will affect your brewery? Do you already use organic hops or is this something you are transitioning into? How's it going? Do you know how much these organic hops will cost?" And these were the responses I've received so far.
From Christian Ettinger of Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, OR (all their beer is organic):
The laws are indeed changing. At Hopworks we currently use about 30% organic hops with an aggressive plan to meet the deadline. It means that we are working with farmers and brokers to meet our hop supply needs with minimal reformulation. Given the fact that it takes three years (36 months) to transition conventional land to organic production and the ruling was passed in Oct 2010 to be enacted in January 2013 (27 months), it may be a mathematically impossible deadline. Prices are for organic hops are in the mid teens. Cheers!
It is true. No big deal for us except for Green Elephant and Deranger (these are really hopped up beers). We'll just brew them the same and not call them organic. The flavor is more important [to us] than whether or not they're organic. The hops I've contracted for are only slightly more expensive. Problems will arise though if there is a bad crop. Not all of our beer is organic. We do use organic 2-row for everything though. The Free Range Red and Porter are our 2 standard organic beers. We [also] just added a pale. These beers will use organic hops. GE and Deranger are the only two other beers we make on a regular basis that will be affected.
From Bryan Simpson, Media Relations Director at New Belgium:
Thanks for the note...We have always used organic hops in our Mothership Wit. One of the challenges in sourcing this initially was that there are so few organic hop producers in the US producing to scale that we had to buy hops from New Zealand (where organics are more readily produced due to a lack pests). We worried about the carbon of shipping that far but in a bittersweet twist, it turns out that conventionally grown hops in the US currently create a bigger carbon footprint (due to pesticide manufacture and other large scale farming practices) than importing organics. So it was still a win from the carbon perspective and the chemical perspective.
This is actually mind-blowing to me that the carbon footprint of shipping organic hops from New Zealand is less than using regular hops from here in the States. I imagine that if New Belgium was a much smaller brewery this wouldn't be the case, being that they are so large they would likely need more organic hops than are potentially readily available.
For now, these have been my responses. I'm still waiting to hear back from Bison Brewing in California and Asher Brewing in Colorado. I'll make another post when I've heard back from those two, and after looking into the pesticides and damaging effects of non-organic malt when I get back home from Kansas City and can dig into a book I have on the subject.
