hops

Edelstoff: A beer fit for a hop queen

Did I mention the Edelstoff from Augustiner was from the wood, and a lot cheaper than beer at Oktoberfest in Munich?

Veronika Springer, Hallertau Hop Queen

Last week Veronika Springer was crowned Hallertau Hop Queen (Hopfenkönigin) for 2011-2012. I didn’t vote for her, but she received 62 percent (1,478) of the votes. The Wolnzach Volkfest tent was rocking, packed with hop farmers and friends washing down traditional festival food with liters of Augustiner.

Veronika Springer, Hallertau Hop Queen

The new queen is well qualified, having grown up on a hop farm and currently working at NATECO2, an extraction plant where hops are the biggest part of the business. She didn’t get my support, or that of several of the brewmasters I was seated with, because she seems to be skeptical about the future of “flavor”1 hops.

Change is afoot in Germany and these are brewers who want to be part of it. That doesn’t mean they are about to abandon tradition, but it does mean the range of flavors from Halltertau hops will soon be broader.2 The crew at the Hop Research Center at Hüll is not interested in copying American hop flavors, but I was there maybe three minutes before I thought, “These guys are not going to be left behind.”

1 With the line between what were once known as “bittering” and “aroma” hops already blurred — and the term “dual purpose” just not cutting it — I’m not sure how the idea of “flavor hops” will fit in, but I heard those words in the UK, Germany and Czech Republic. These could also be called “impact hops.” To the continental palate Cascade is a “flavor” hop; while you’ve got to throw something like Citra or Simcoe at an hop-experienced American for impact. Sound confusing? At least you don’t have to sort it out for a book.

2 These hops are also going to show up in beers brewed in America. I can’t wait.

And the band played on

The Spalter POV

View from hop drying floor in Spalt

This is the view from the first (remember, on this side of the Atlantic the ground is 0 and the first floor one above it) story of a pretty typical hop drying barn in Spalt, Germany’s oldest hop growing region. Hops, trees, enchanting village . . . there’s a lot more to Bavaria, but I favor those ingredients.

Although Spalt holds Germany’s oldest hops trademark, awarded in 1538, and was once a large hop growing region these days its 75 growers tend to only 370 hectars (a hectar equals about two and a half acres). In contrast, 73 growers oversee production of more than 16,000 hectars in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

In the Spalt region, hops is a family business rather than a growth business.

“It used to be you’d see hops every direction you looked,” Hermann Wissmüller, a local doctor, said between sips of Spalter Leichte Weisse at lunchtime. “One year there would be many new yards, and the next farmers were taking them out.”

Wissmüller owns part of Stadtbrauerei Spalt in the middle of town. Simply because he’s a resident. It is the only community owned brewery in German, and presumably in the world. “There are 5,000 of us, so I own one five-thousandeth. And so does she,” he said, pointing to the woman who poured me a Spalter Pilsner.

“No big brewery is going to take over this one,” he said. “It is ours.”

Morning in the Hallertau

Morning in the land of hops

The picture gets small fast when you try to capture the expanse of hops. The yards are everywhere. I knew this. We’ve driven through here in December, but it’s quite different when hops are growing.

A more amusing photo would have been me trooping through the test plots at the Hop Research Center at Hüll. I had to wear blue booties, like the ones you see people wearing in hospitals for some antiseptic reason. In this case, they don’t want any foreign critters tracked into the yard. I didn’t even tell them that I’d been in and out of English fields a few days before.

Palate readjustment

Last beer yesterday: Fuller’s Chiswick Ale in the pub on the brewery grounds. Four different hops. Five different hop additions. Just what a 3.5% abv English bitter should be.

First beer today: Augustiner Pilsner after driving through scores of German hop fields sparkling in the late afternoon sun. No stopping for photos on the autobahn, but maybe I can post one or two tomorrow. Augustiner is one of the sponsors of the Hallertau Volkfest that starts Friday. Tuesday they choose a new hop queen. I will report back.

#IPA Day: A whiter shade of pale

We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale

– Procol Harum, “Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967)

Better than another Black India Pale Ale, I guess. And if calling these beers White IPAs was part of the process of creating two delightful variations on a collaborative recipe from Boulevard Brewing and Deschutes Brewery then I can live with the less delightful name. Just so nobody petitions to make it another category in some beer competition.

Make no mistake, this collaboration between Steve Pauwels of Boulevard Brewing and Larry Sidor of Deschutes Brewery resulted in two distinct beers. Same recipe, same basic ingredients, including the yeast, but different beers. I’ll leave it to others to call one or the other better. (For instance, here.) They’re both keepers.

Boulevard labels the ‘White IPA” Collaboration No. 2 and packages it in 750 ml corked bottles (part of the Smokestack Series). Deschutes calls their’s Conflux No. 2 (No. 1 hasn’t been released; another story) and sells it in 22-ounce bottles. They both contain 7.5% alcohol by volume. Looking as his computer screen Pauwels said Boulevard’s version measures 57 IBU. Deschutes “beer geek information” says Conflux clocks in at 60 IBU. Probably because I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to call a beer any sort of IPA in Oregon if it doesn’t have at least 60 bitterness units.

Sidor and Pauwels started discussing a collaboration about two years ago. They wanted to include components from each brewery. They began to settle on the idea of a hop forward (Sidor wrote the chapter on hops for the Master Brewers Association of the America’s technical manuals) and wheat beer (Boulevard’s specialty).

“Larry was talking about how hard it was to make their Cascadian Dark (known in some quarters as a Black IPA)” one moment, Pauwels said, and the next they had a plan. It would be a White IPA, and they’d be making up the rules as they went along. They expected to have hours together to work on the recipe during a layover in the Denver airport, but that became minutes when Pauwels’ flight was delayed.

Deschutes made a test batch, then another and another, and each time Sidor would ship a growler from Bend, Oregon, to Kansas City. The beer evolved along the way. The first batch at Deschutes wasn’t particularly cloudy; the final one shimmers brightly. They added sage and lemongrass to the recipe and eventually settled on this:

Fermentables
Pilsner
Malted wheat
Unmalted wheat
Flaked oats

Hops
Bravo (for bittering)
Citra
Cascade
Centennial

Other items of note
Whole leaf sage
Sliced lemongrass
Milled coriander
Ground sweet orange peel

Yeast
Wyeast 3463 (Forbidden Fruit)

Pauwels thinks sage was a key addition. “We just couldn’t get the white beer character,” he said. And adding more orange peel and coriander would created an unpleasantly overspiced beer. “It would have become fake; the flavor would have been fake. Like somebody put drops of (flavoring) oil in it.”

Both versions are brimming with citrus character, which shouldn’t be a surprise looking at the hop bill. The sage adds herbal notes, to my nose more in the Boulevard version than Conflux No. 2. It’s easier to smell and taste than it is to describe, but if you’ve visited the two breweries the reason why is obvious. Deschutes uses hop cones and has a hop back. Boulevard uses pellets and must rely on late additions of hops and dry hopping to recreate the flavors you’d experience rubbing hop cones together at harvest.

One happens before fermentation and one after, and I’ll spare you the details, but that makes a difference.

Back when the theme for The Session #39 was collaboration I wrote about what Luke Nicholas and Kelly Ryan learned brewing together. Talking to Sidor and Pauwels it’s obvious that occurred here as well. “It was sure a lesson for me about using the brewhouse to get more out of the hops,” Pauwels said.

Myself, I’m wondering what the beers might have tasted like if they hadn’t skipped the light fandango.