punkin said:
I don't know why people would order from the states for hops and wait weeks when for a couple of extra dollars (and it really is only a couple of extra dollars) they can order from
http://www.hopdealzaustralia.com/ and have it next day or day after and support an aussie business run by a local brewer.
I'm not against ordering from the states, but when the benefits are that small i just have never seen the point.
As I recently posted on another thread, I've just bought an Aldi freezer and did a big hoptake stocktake and ended up chucking at least a kilo of assorted stuff that was mostly no good from the day I took delivery of it - EKG, Saphir, and a few other bits and pieces. What with those, the half kilo of Galena I've given away in the past and
don't mention the Chinese Hops I've had little or no benefit ordering from overseas or from Ellerslie - to my knowledge I've never binned a hop bought from local suppliers and sponsors. I'm back onto UK styles anyway and enjoying some stunning Challenger from Ross and EKG from MHB - and can still afford to eat and put petrol in the car.
Now, the other thing about bittering hops (edit: specifically bittering as opposed to just plain old hops) is that they are a fairly new animal in the thousand years of brewing hopped beers and were bred specifically for commercial breweries. There absolutely has to be hop breeding programs around the world because hops are very prone to being wiped out by disease, that has happened monotonously in the UK, America and Europe. For example, little known fact that New York State was THE hop growing area in the USA until it was wiped out by disease and had to move West.
The other thing that the hop breeders came up with, starting after the Second World War was to start investigating high alpha hops for the commercial brewers who were emerging as mega industrial blocs and were now being run by accountants. The problem with higher alpha hops is that many of them also have manky tastes and aromas that would have been quite unacceptable to old time beer drinkers who were used to the traditional hops like Fuggles, Saaz, Goldings etc. I believe our palates have been "trained" to accept these flavours nowadays and in fact I do like Challenger, one of the real early "dual purpose" hops, but it's interesting that the beers we prize and try to emulate as home brewers such as TTL, Czech Pilseners, etc are quite often based on a monotonous few old Traditional hops.
It's good to experiment with the new citrussy piney passionfruity hops for their interesting new flavours but as a home brewer into malty beers with subtle hop accents, I'm moving away from the concept of
bittering hops and getting the bitterness as a side product of the other things I am looking for
endeth sermon B)
