Tag Archives: hops

Hops data – suitable for framing

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Who doesn’t love a good infographic? I love ‘em. Any time someone can take dry statistics and turn them into a compelling graphical representation has really got something.

A guy who’s got that something is Zeke Shore, a graphic designer by trade, and a home brewer.  He’d been working on some data visualization that would illustrate the oil and acid content of hops to develop better recipes. After a couple of years of refinement he’s “done”.

The result is a beautiful chart showing bitterness and flavors/aromas. He’s making it available as a 24″ × 36″ print on natural white textured paper. Put it in a frame and you have a wonderful gift for the home brewer in your life. (The holidays are fast approaching, after all.)

Hops Chart - Visualizing Bitterness Flavors & Aromas of Beer Brewing Hops

Hops history

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“The Zythophile” has a fascinating history of the use of hops in beer. As you might expect, we have a certain fondness for those little flower cones.

A short history of hops

When exactly hops began to be cultivated for putting into beer, rather than just being gathered wild from forests, is surprisingly unclear. German sources today claim that hop gardens appear in records dating from the second half of the ninth century in and around Hallertau, in Bavaria, Southern Germany, which is still the world’s largest single hop-growing area. However, they do not specify exact documents in which these hop gardens are mentioned, which makes it impossible to rely on their assertions. The best evidence seems to be that commercial hop cultivation happened in Northern Germany first, and not until the 1100s or 1200s, feeding the breweries of the Hansa trading towns, which were exporting hopped beer from at least the 13th century onwards. (Merchant beer brewers in North German cities eventually became rich enough to join the local aristocracy, something not found in Britain until the 18th century).

“Short”? Well, compared to book form. As usual, Mr. Phile debunks a number of wildly held beliefs. It’s a good read; check it out.

A.B.’s Beer Bread

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We had a party to go to this weekend where we were to bring an appetizer and a dessert. My wife made some cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies from a recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray package of dried cranberries. I wanted to do something a little more sophisticated and fun and so I turned to a recipe for beer bread that I saw Alton Brown make the other night on his "Fermentation Nation" episode of Good Eats.

The main flavors for this bread come from some dill, cheddar cheese and, of course, beer. AB recommended a good pale ale as opposed to a stout, or lager, that I see called for in many recipes. I decided to go with Ithaca’s Cascazilla, a monstrously hoppy brew. Here’s a picture of it…

Unfortunately, this bread was close to awful. I found it way too salty to begin with, but even beyond that it just didn’t have a good taste to it. I followed the recipe exactly including weighing my ingredients. The texture of the bread was perfect, so I am pretty sure I didn’t make any mistakes. I’m not going to even give you the recipe (though the link is above). The unofficial Hop Talk rating for this is a 1. So sad.

But the cookies were awesome!

Session #23: What I will NOT miss from 2008

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I don’t want to put a downer on it all, but 2008 was not one of the best years I’ve had. I could swing this as a “looking forward to 2009″, but let’s face it… this is just a “buh-bye” to 2008. For this Session, I’ve put together a top 5 things I will not miss from 2008.

The Session - Beer Blogging FridaySo, a special thanks goes out to Beers and Firkins for sponsoring this session:

Specifically, what will you miss about 2008 (feel free to list your tasting notes, if that item is a particular beer) and what do you expect will excite you most in 2009 , in the “Beer World”? (again, if that is a beer, what about it is special and worthy of being excited about?)

Let’s get on with the list…

5) Imperial Race – I enjoy beer… so much, I like to have a second, or even a third. So what is it with this “mine is bigger than yours” competition? I can’t drink a 12% bomber! Let’s make big beer, big taste, and less alcohol.

4) Elusive Real Porter – Just so you know, I’m still looking. They’ve only gotten thinner from what I’ve tasted.

3) Poor Quality Control – I hate getting spoiled beer. Whether it is the distributor’s fault for hanging on to year old beer, or contract brewers not holding up their end, or the originating brewer not taking quality control measures…. I REALLY hate buying a nice beer that tastes like cardboard my cat just coughed up .

2) Wheat Beer Sprawl – Good man, people… does every brewer have to make 3 varieties of wheat beers to satisfy the gateway drinkers? Make one, and make the rest real beer!

1) Price of Hops / Shortage – While there is no way to predict where the price of hops will be going, it only went up in 2008. Let’s hope it doesn’t go up any further so I can have the hops I love so much.

2009… Here I come!

IPA Bake Off

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Back in October we tried an Octoberfest bake off (a taste test) and it wasn’t that successful. Nice.. not thrillin’, but nice. So when a different group of my friends suggested a blind IPA taste testing, I wasn’t very optimistic; but of course I was game anyway.

Surprise! Not only was it a great evening, the winners and losers made it all that much more interesting. We scored them differently than I had done previously, not just on an overall impression like the unofficial Hop-Talk rating system is built upon, but rather a much more detailed method using a standard beer judging sheet. It is based on an overall score of 50 points made up of several categories.

scoring chart

Here are the results. I rounded the averages of the four of us playing judge…

ipa-taste-test
My comments after the tasting go like this…
Rogue - Yes, it stood alone at the top.
Stone – One of my favorite IPA’s. My score for it probably would have been higher but I hadn’t just taken a break in tasting for a slice of Buffalo Pizza… probably not the best idea and probably affected the overall result.
Butternut – We were all surprised by this one, but me most of all as I really don’t like Butternut’s other brews. I’m going to have to go back for this one.
Middle Ages – While we all know and love this IPA, none of us expected it to rate so high. Glad to see it up there.
Sam Smith – I nailed the import.

I had a great time doing this… I don’t know if the flavors varied that much greater than the octoberfest styles, or if the method in judging was what made it so much better. In any case, the casual nature and long evening in which we took to do it was one for the books.

Special thanks to our servers, Ellie & Katie, and their scientific strategy to organization assuring accurate test results. (We will excuse the Yuengling Porter incident.)

Hops! Hops! My kingdom for some hops!

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A couple of weeks ago Tom Flores, the brewmaster at Brewer’s Alley stopped into our F.O.A.M. meeting to let us sample their Kölsch, which they’re now also bottling. (They’ve been bottling their pilsner for quite some time.)

Hop ConeHe also let us know that we would start seeing rising prices for supplies. Malting barley as well as hops are in rather short supply. Granted, at the volume that homebrewers buy the price will be negligible at best, but that he’d already been having trouble even securing malt and hops, much less paying more. He said that for some varieties there just aren’t any available. Fortunately, there are some new varieties coming online that he’s experimenting with. (One of the benefits of being a craft brewer.)

Still, prices are going up for supplies, so the downstream consumer (that’s me) is going to see prices go up. The giants won’t be too bad off, since they contract for their supplies for years in advance and just buy so much. They also have enough money that they can probably absorb the extra cost, meaning a 30-pack of cans will probably cost the same.

The smaller guys are the ones who will feel it. Considering the craft beer scene is rife with “extreme” beers with many times more hops (by volume) than industrial-brewed light lagers. Economies of scale are working against them. It would be awful if some small brewers just couldn’t produce their beers or, perhaps worse, had to raise prices so much that sales suffer and result in a cash-crunch on the other end.

Why? Well, the big hops warehouse fire last year didn’t help, nor did some fires at a coupld of hop kilns. Many people are also blaming the focus on corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel. Farmers who would have planted hops (and barley) are instead getting more money with corn. Not to mention the disease- and pest-fighting properties of corn versus hops make it a “safer” way to go. And let’s not forget the record weakness of the U.S. Dollar. None of this is new news, however.

Of course, if you’ve spent any time at all reading beer blogs this comes as no surprise. It seems like everyone is talking about it. A quick search on the Beer Blog Search Engine for “hops shortage” reveals quite a few. Here’s a sampling:

Update: Trouble brewing for small beer makers over hops shortage (AP)

No American beer in London, but lots of American hops

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While Ron and Al take a little break, please enjoy this guest post from Bailey of boakandbailey.com, based in London.

It’s still comparatively rare to see American beer in bars and pubs in London. Almost every place now has at least one Belgian beer, even if it’s only Leffe, whilst some of the best places don’t have any American beer at all. There are some places with a bigger selection — the Rake at London Bridge, for example — but they’re few and far between.

The most common brands are Brooklyn Lager and Anchor Steam, which are turning up in corner shops and supermarkets as well as pubs, bars and restaurants. Goose Island IPA is becoming more common, too.

This is a bit odd, given that beer enthusiasts are more-or-less united in their enthusiasm for American craft brewing — witness the scrum around the American bar at the Great British Beer Festival last month. The fact is, though, that Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic are very nearby, whereas there’s a bleedin’ great ocean inbetween Britain and America.

But don’t despair. The taste for American beer in Britain, combined with its scarcity, has led to a very welcome development. Many small British breweries are being inspired by American beer to add to their range British style ales with huge amounts of citrusy American hops. Crouch Vale‘s Brewer’s Gold and Buntingford‘s 92 Squadron are great examples, but by no means the only ones.

These beers come in a range of colours and styles, from golden ale to brown ale, but stand out from the crowd because of the use of these distinctive and refreshing hop aroma and flavour. The style where American hops are making the biggest impact, however, is IPA. Even in the UK, where fuggles or Kent goldings have been the the more traditional choices, cascades or similar are becoming a necessity — it’s just not an IPA without the intense floral, orange aroma. St Austell‘s excellent Proper Job (better in bottles than on tap) could pass for an American craft brew, thanks to the use of American hops amongst a blend of five or six others.