hops

Chatter about the increasing popularity of pilsner, maybe even pale lager, is pretty constant on Twitter, but got a little louder following a recent story in The Washington Post (“Make room, hoppy IPA. Pilsener is the buzzy new craft beer”). In it, Matt Brynildson makes it clear that Firestone Walker’s Pivo Pils is a hoptimized, Americanized version of a pale lager.

But time moves on and memories fade. After drinking fresh Pilseners on trips to Europe, Brynildson decided he wanted to bring one back to Southern California. That became Firestone’s Pivo Hoppy Pils, which uses German hops, malt and yeast, but adds dry-hopping with spicy, citrusy Saphir hops, a technique not used in the old country. “I put it under the nose of a German brewmaster, and they say, ‘This is nice, but this is not a Pilsener,'” he laughs. “Pivo is just too aromatic, too hop-aroma-forward for Europe.” It does well in hop-crazy America, though: Pivo won gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival every year from 2013 to 2015. For IPA lovers who are just moving into Pilseners, there’s something more recognizable from the level of hops, even if they don’t taste the same as the tropical hops in, say, Firestone’s Luponic Distortion IPA.

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I don’t plan to call it Postcards from an Oast House, or The Lupulin Letters, but these days a newsletter seems like a good place to park bits of hop-related flotsam that you’d rather see remain infobits a good idea.

Sometimes we are talking bad rumors. For instance, that the collaboration beer brewed by Pinthouse Pizza, Wicked Weed Brewing and Creature Comforts Brewing to showcase some of the new Cryo Hops from YCH Hops contained seven pounds of LupuLN2 powder per barrel. That would be comparable to 14 pounds of hop pellets or 7% of a 200-pound hop bale for in 31 gallons of beer. The day after I heard the rumor I saw Creature Comforts head brewer David Stein at the Craft Brewers Conference trade show. He and his fellow conspirators “only” used the equivalent of 6-and-half pounds of pellets per barrel, most of that powder. Crazy, but not insane. So infobits that merit more than a tweet, less than a post.

Expect a bit of agriculture, a dash of science, an occasional new variety, and always some hop geekery. As often as not you will be reading the questions I am asking hop scientists, hop farmers, hop breeders, brewers and anybody else who will put up with my questions.

It took me a little while to figure this out. That’s why some sentences are crossed out. I’ve decided to call the newsletter Hop Queries, because I know better than to promise Hop Answers.

Pioneer Hops in Connecticut has begun calling hops known as Cascade elsewhere CONNcade and Chinook hops CONNnook.*

Before your knee jerks because you thought you heard the bullshit marketing alarm go off, consider that this might be truth in advertising.

Hop farmers, and of course brewers, in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and now Connecticut have all commented about how less piney and resinous the Chinook they grow are than those from the Northwest. They are more tropical — mango and pineapple are popular descriptors, sometime peach — fashionable flavores these days. Brewers want tropical, but James Altweis at Gorst Valley Hops in Wisconsin says they are confused when they get a whiff of Wisconsin Chinook because the hops are expecting piney. “In the marketplace people are looking for the Chinook they know,” he says. So Gorst Valley renamed the variety Skyrocket.

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