Hop Taste Experiment

[SJW]

How many of us out there tend to use the same type of hops for the same old style of beers? Hopefully not too many. But what I have noticed is that I nearly always use NB for bittering and use Hallertau for my German Lagers, EKG or Willamette for English, Porters and stouts. And Saaz for Pilsners.
Well I went into MHB yesterday and asked Mark if I could get a couple of pellets of all the hop varieties he had in stock as I want to boil up 2 or 3 pellets in about 50ml of water for 15 mins then, using a dropper or something inject 30mls or so into a basic, bland old mega swill. My plan is to get the beer as cold as possible, almost freezing, pop the top off and inject with 30mls of the hop liquid and thrown in 1 pellet for dry hopping and the recap.
Why? Good question. Other than to destroy a perfectly good case of mega swill its the only way I can think of to get a taste of some different hops that I might not or may never use.
So Mark was kind enough to donate about 25 different hop varieties for my experiment and I picked up a case of that Amsterdam Lager for Dans today. Thats about as neutral as it gets.
Can anyone see any fundamental problem with this method or make any worthwhile contributions before I trash a case of beer and blow a full day boiling up all these hops?

Steve

 

[AndrewQLD]

You will be diluting the mega swill with 30mls of hop "water" effecting the malt/hop profile, perhaps?.

Why not crack one of the bottles and use the beer instead of the water?
I don't know if it would make much difference but at least you will have the malt backbone rather than just diluting the beer more.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[bconnery]

How many of us out there tend to use the same type of hops for the same old style of beers? Hopefully not too many. But what I have noticed is that I nearly always use NB for bittering and use Hallertau for my German Lagers, EKG or Willamette for English, Porters and stouts. And Saaz for Pilsners.
Well I went into MHB yesterday and asked Mark if I could get a couple of pellets of all the hop varieties he had in stock as I want to boil up 2 or 3 pellets in about 50ml of water for 15 mins then, using a dropper or something inject 30mls or so into a basic, bland old mega swill. My plan is to get the beer as cold as possible, almost freezing, pop the top off and inject with 30mls of the hop liquid and thrown in 1 pellet for dry hopping and the recap.
Why? Good question. Other than to destroy a perfectly good case of mega swill it's the only way I can think of to get a taste of some different hops that I might not or may never use.
So Mark was kind enough to donate about 25 different hop varieties for my experiment and I picked up a case of that Amsterdam Lager for Dans today. That's about as neutral as it gets.
Can anyone see any fundamental problem with this method or make any worthwhile contributions before I trash a case of beer and blow a full day boiling up all these hops?

Steve

Steve, this method has been undertaken by a few clubs etc so you are right on the money.

I'd suggest that you don't even need 15 minutes, maybe 10 to really get the flavour aspects only but that's just my Xc worth (you determine the value )...

Go for it. The closer you are to playing with the wonderful variety of hops there are out there the better!

Oh, and just jump straight in and use First Gold for your English bitters. Don't take this as gospel of course because I am a very biased source on this subject...

 

[Cortez The Killer]

Sounds like hoppy good fun

Would be worth getting a couple of people together to sample the results

Cheers

 

[SJW]

Would be worth getting a couple of people together to sample the results

Maybe at the next HAG (Hunter All Grain) brew day. A little bird told me we might be going back to Potters soon.

Steve