Hop Help And Inspiration Please

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bignath

"Grains don't grow up to be chips, son"
Joined
3/11/08
Messages
2,611
Reaction score
40
G'day brewers,

have two dilemmas.

1. HOP PROBLEM OR NOT?

Have a freind who has recently started brewing, about a year ago. Makes some pretty decent beers based on recipes i give him, he tweaks and experiments.
I do a Nelson Sauvin Ale, which started as a smash experiment before i had used it before. Since it turned into my favourite hop several years ago, the recipe evolved to include some spec malts, carapils, munich, some crystal etc. Just trying different things, all with good results.

He has just produced a nelson sauvin beer, with three additions, 30, 10 and cube hopped. Total ibus would be close to mid 30-low 40's.

I tasted it at his place last night, and the first thing i got from it was a sour milk twang, bad dairy type flavour. This to me has always indicated that the hops must be bad. He's convinced it's the hops too, BUT, i've just gone out to my hop storage freezer and had a good whiff of my NS stock. We bought some in bulk, and then split it. This would be around 6months or so ago. Mine smell fantastic, just the way NS should smell.

Here's the question about this....

Is there any other way that a brew can get that weird, strong, sour milk, off dairy type flavour and aroma, if we ruled out the hops based on smell from the package? Is it even a smell that you can pick up in a packet of hops? Do hops have to be thrown into hot liquid to release those types of flavours and smells?

I intend to ask him to smell his hops, or better still, i'll go around tomorrow and have a sniff myself. Just wondering if hops are bad, is it obvious just from opening a pack and sniffing them?

2. INSPIRATION....

I need a bit of inspiration at the moment. Have been doing a lot of beers with NZ hops which i typically love, aswell as a whole heap of Citra based ales.

I love 'em, but want to try something different.
Here's what i currently have in my freezer.

Citra
Summit
Columbus (Tomahawk)
Galaxy
Cascade
Nelson Sauvin
Motueka
Waimea
Rakau
Kohatu
Us Magnum

plus several others....POR, Hersbrucker, US Saaz....

Malts, i have BB Ale Malt, Carapils, Munich I, Wheat Malt (not much)

I'd really love to use Summit, Columbus, Galaxy as i have zero experience with them. Actually i did one beer with Galaxy but it didn't turn out well due to other fuckups circumstances, so i don't really know what to expect or how best to use it.
Would love to try summit, columbus based beers but can't seem to find too many beers that use them.

If you had the hops and malt's listed above, what would you make?
I typically love APA's and that's what i tend to brew most.

cheers for any help.

Nath
 
bad sour milk smell sounds like bad yeast to me or the hops have gone mouldy
 
smells like sour milk? ie Yoghurt? Lacto.....
 
Sounds like classic lacto infection descriptor.

If you enjoy APA, then brew some APAs using the hops you have never used on a reliable grist and see what they bring to the table. Summit has a rep for being onion-like and I get the same from Galaxy, but both should work fine if you hop with a judicious hand (I am hardly preaching what I practice - but I have dumped a batch of 10 min IPA using Cluster).
 
Magnum @ 60
Galaxy @ 30
Galaxy @ 10
Cascade @ 5

(based on no chill adjust to your required IBU's)
 
Magnum @ 60
Galaxy @ 30
Galaxy @ 10
Cascade @ 5

(based on no chill adjust to your required IBU's)
For 20 litres of APA I'd go

20g Magnum @ 60
15g Galaxy @ 30
15g Galaxy @ 10
20g Cascade @ 5

...but I'm a hop head
 
For 20 litres of APA I'd go

20g Magnum @ 60
15g Galaxy @ 30
15g Galaxy @ 10
20g Cascade @ 5

...but I'm a hop head

I love me hops too.

Is that no chilled, or do you chill? Im guessing chilled. If im right, maybe i could go magnum at 40, galaxy at 5, galaxy and cascade into the cube?

Have you done that hop bill before? If so, how would you describe the final product?

Will plug this into BS and see what it spits out...
 
I love me hops too.

Is that no chilled, or do you chill? Im guessing chilled. If im right, maybe i could go magnum at 40, galaxy at 5, galaxy and cascade into the cube?

Have you done that hop bill before? If so, how would you describe the final product?

Will plug this into BS and see what it spits out...

No chill...of course.

Tasted like a cracking APA.
 
Back
Top