hops

If I had a blueberry anosmia¹ this would make more sense, but I can identify blueberries in a blind tasting, or blueberry muffins or even blueberry beer. So why, when I smell a beer rich with Mosaic hop aroma don’t I perceive blueberries? Or when I take a deep whiff of Sierra Nevada Harvest Single IPA with what the label calls “Yakima #291″ hops”?

This really doesn’t bother me much. It could be worse. One-third of the population is blind to beta-ionone, a compound with a floral note particularly prominent in Saaz hops. I’m not in that group. It would suck not to be able to fully appreciate Saaz.

But why did the guy pouring in a Santa Barbara area wine tasting room last week say, “Now, Mosaic, there’s a blueberry hop”? It’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard somebody say that. Or how about this description of the Harvest Single IPA at the Sierra Nevada web site? “Blueberry in a beer! The consensus? That’s flavor fit for a bottle.” OK, it doesn’t really bother me that much. There are plenty of reasons that smell is referred to as the “most enigmatic of our senses.”

But it’s interesting you and I might rate blueberry aroma equally intense in one case, say a pie, and differently in another — simply because other aroma compounds are present. Before I head down that rabbit hole, back to the Harvest Single IPA, which has been hard to come by in our parts but we found easily last week in California.

As much as the mysteries of aroma fascinate me, so do the ins and outs of hop genetics. (So this might be the time you want to gently ease your way to another ready.) Mosaic is a daughter of Simcoe and a male plant called 986-2. Simcoe is a bit of a pungent brute, its aroma a calling card for American-style IPAs, sometimes called dank and, depending on your genetic disposition, downright “catty.”

HBC 291 — the name it was patented under, but not the name it will have if it goes into wider production — is a daughter of Glacier and a male called 9902(2). Glacier is much more demure than Simcoe, though not nearly as popular. Farmers planted about 1,260 acres of Simcoe in 2013, compared to less than 100 of Glacier. Its stone fruit character, notably peach, apparently is not as hip. Glacier is a daughter of the endangered French variety Strisselspalt, one of those hops I fear we will miss deeply when she is gone.

Before I lapse into further melancholy, the point here is that two very different mothers produced hops that when introduced into beer² contribute to a blueberry aroma. Or don’t.

*****

¹ Anosmia in a condition in which a person with an otherwise normal sense of smell cannot detect a specific type of odor molecule. It may also describe a complete loss of smell, which may or may not be temporary. The former is rather common, the latter depressing and much more rare.

² HBC 291 was one of the hops available to evaluate last year when I spoke at Hop Union’s Hop & Brew School. It is important to remember that what you smell from a raw hop doesn’t necessarily translate into the same aroma in a beer. The interaction with yeast changes compounds. Anyway, HBC was the most pleasant of the varieties we smelled, HBC 438 as the most divisive (I was in the “love it” camp), and Mosaic sucked, reeking of diesel fuel (not indicative of the overall crop). My notes for HBC 291 describe it as “really clean, floral/spicy, a herbaceous note reminiscent of Centennial.” Still nothing about blueberry.

– Terroir and the Making of Beer into Wine. I commented on the original post (leaving a typo; sigh) because it is a topic obviously dear to me. However, and I might wear you out with this, using the word terroir when talking about beer from a place just confuses the conversation. To cite Jamie Goode for the second week in a row, he once described the concept of terroir in wine as “blindingly obvious and hotly controversial.”

Find a word to use other than terroir and the conversation may change. Read the other comments and also head over to a discussion that popped up at Beer Advocate with that in mind. And particularly this post from VitisVinifera, which takes things in another direction.

until a brewer:
-grows their barley/wheat/whatever right there
-grows their hops right there
-gets their water on-site
-completes all of this with a contiguous on-site brewery

I will consider this an unanswered question

My argument would be that a beer can taste of a place, represent a place, and be unique to a place without every damn ingredient being from that place.

– Does beer need editing? Boak and Bailey ask that question and more: “Who is there to stop a brewer releasing a bad beer? To say, before it reaches the public, that it is simply not good enough?”

– International Gruit Day. Circle the date on your calendar: Feb. 1. But celebrate responsibly, because there’s little nastier than a Ground Hog Day hangover.

– There are at least two different “wine communities” – and they don’t talk to each other. Arguably at least three beer communities. Can you name them?

– Best Beer Writing Contest. Sponsored by the Beer Bloggers Conference and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA). Twenty-five entrants receive free registration to the 2014 Beer Bloggers Conference and the overall winner gets a free trip for two to attend NBWA’s 77th Annual Convention in New Orleans. A new blog post, dated after Dec. 19, is required, one that discusses the topic of “America’s Beer Renaissance: Consumer Choice and Variety in the U.S. Beer Market.” One of the suggested topics — and if you want to win you should consider their agenda — is, “How can beer writers partner with brewers, beer distributors and retailers to promote beer in their communities?”

– Single hop beers, an interesting geeky angle on beer. Jamie Goode, one of the most authorative wine writers anywhere, tastes single hop beers. He knows his way around, and appreciates, beer, so worth reading on its own.

I was further struck by the name on and his description of Marks & Spencer Hallertau Brewers Gold Golden Ale Single Variety Hopped Ale. 4% ABV, made by Crouch Vale Brewery, Essex. His notes: “This is a Bavarian hop. Very fruity style with some malty richness, a bit of spice and nice rich texture. Concentrated: an interesting-tasting lager style. 8 (out of 10)”

Brewer’s Gold was bred in 1917 at Wye College 60 miles east of London and released for cultivation in 1934. With her, and her sister Bullion, breeder E.S. Salmon took hops in a new direction. He was the first to cross pollinate genetically distinct American hops with European hops. When Salmon began at Wye College, hops contained 4 percent alpha acids on average and 6 percent at the most. Breeders have since released hops with more than 20 percent alpha acids, almost always using cultivars that lead back to Salmon. They not only contain more alpha acids, but different odor compounds. Thus brewers can use “exotic” hop varieties like Citra and Mosaic from the United States, Galaxy from Australia, or Mandarina Bavaria from Germany.

It took 40 years some places and 70 others for distinct “American” aromas (citrus, piney, black currant, ribes) to catch on. I’ve never heard a beer freshly hopped with Old World varities (Saaz, Hersbrucker and friends) described as smelling like a cat’s litter box, but the same single-hopped Citra beers some people embrace for their tropical aromas and flavors others find “catty.”

Not much Brewer’s Gold is grown in the Hallertau region of Bavaria — heck, not much is grown anywhere — but it is interesting to consider how it becomes different when it is a Bavarian hop rather than a Kentish hop or a Yakima hop.

One of the hop farms I visited in Bavaria while researching “For The Love of Hops” was owned by the Bogensbergers, the last farmers in the Hallertau region to grow Nugget, a variety bred in Oregon for its (then high) alpha. “It has a much better aroma than 20 years ago,” Florian Bogensberger said. “All the imported varieties, they are very strong when they arrive, but they change.”

They also grew American-bred Columbus, which is pungent and sometimes catty, for several years. “When it came over it was rough, but it turned into something smooth,” he said.

– Nine beers many Americans no longer drink. The list is back, and it is easy to understand why Budweiser, given that its sales have fallen 29 percent between 2007 and 2012, is on it. However nobody drinks? Bud still sold 16.8 million barrels in 2012. That’s 3.5 million more barrels that craft beers sales in 2012 (the official Brewers Association total for the year).

– Everything you wanted to know about Devon White Ale but were afraid to ask.

– The Session #83 topic announced: “Against The Grain.” “I can find myself wondering sometimes when I’ve had an extremely popular beer, but haven’t been all that ‘wowed’ … is it me? Am I missing something here? Was there too much hype? Could there be such a thing as taste inflation? If we really want to dive further into this, is it really only ‘good” if a large portion of the craft beer community says it is or is our own opinion and taste enough?”

– A visit to Donnington Brewery. Ed Wray steps back in time, except as he points out it is fascinating this is a working brewery rather than a museum. Great photos.