How To Choose The (microbrews) Variety Of Hops For Your Home Brewed Beer
No commentsBy Lee MacRae
Brewing your own personal beer at home can be an amazing experience. It offers you the opportunity to create a brew to your exacting tastes when Brewing your own beer at home. It can also offer you the opportunity of making a beer you can’t get very easily locally. Home beer brewing also gives you the freedom to play with the exact ingredients that will determine the final taste of the final product. But sometimes selecting those exact ingredients can be difficult. For example, there are dozens of hops varieties that you can choose from. The article that follows will discuss how to choose the right hops for the particular beer you want to makeup at home.
There are actually so many different kinds of hops that it actually can be confusing at first. There are different varieties that are grown in North America, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand that have different properties. And often these varieties of hops can be used in the brewing of one or more beers. For example, the hops variety known as Brewer’s Gold can be used for an English ale, Northwest Golding can be used in making Ale, a porter, stout, ESB or bitter, Hallertauer Mittelfrh can be used in home brewing Lager, bock, wheat and maybe pilsner while U.S. Northern Brewer is great for ESB (Extra Special Bitter), bitter, English pale ale, porter as well as California (steam) beer.
There are a number of things you need to look for when selecting your hops. You have to know the alpha acid “rating” for the specific hops you are considering. This rating tells you how much of the weight of the hop consists of alpha acids. Hops that have a higher alpha acid content will contribute more bitterness than a low alpha hop will when using the same amount of that hop.
For example, Bramling Cross (U.K.) has an Alpha Acid % of 5% to 7%, Chinook offers an Alpha Acid content ranging from 10% to 14% while Admiral (U.K.) gives you an Alpha Acid content of 13.5% to 16%. WGV (Whitbread Golding Variety) from the U.K. is 5% to 7% while Satus goes from 12.5% to 14%. Each variety of hops contributes a bitterness that will balance the sweetness of the malt in the beer so you need to choose wisely.
In addition, each hops variety will add a specific flavor or aroma to your beer. For example, Ahtanum is described as being floral, citrus, sharp, and piney, Bullion is described as having an intense blackcurrant aroma while Chinook is described as having a mild to a medium-heavy, spicy, piney, and grapefruity flavoring. As you can see, each of variety of hops has a particular characteristic to add to your beer.
While all this might seem to be daunting or confusing at first, the good thing is that you will find charts available that will describe the alpha acid rating as well as the flavor or aroma of each variety of hops. You can also find charts that will tell you exactly which hops are best for which variety of beers. You can visit your local home beer making store or you can look on the Internet for information and charts to help you choose a variety of hops for your next batch. Having this information at hand will also help you to choose and even allows you to experiment with a specific variety of hops that will add or lessen the bitterness you prefer. Or you can decide on the flavoring that you would like to have in your next beer.
There are some home beer brewing hobbyists who prefer to try and grow their own hops rather than getting them from a hops supplier or your nearby home beer brewing hobby store. If you decide to try to grow your own keep in mind that it may take you from 2 to 3 years to harvest the full crop. But this can definitely be another way of having full control over another ingredient in your home brew.
As you can see, hops are a key ingredient in beer and they provide much of the flavor and spice that defines many different categories of beer. Don’t be afraid to experiment and to try a different variety of hops to add to the flavor of your home made beer. Take a new variety of hops for a spin and create a homemade beer that will take your friends and family (if not the world) by storm!
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