Little Creature Pale Ale - Wet Hopped

[malt_shovel]

Little Creatures has used wet-hops from Tasmania in the whirlpool to create their "Fresh Hop" Pale Ale, using the conventional Pale ALe as the basis for the beer.

I was all set to get blown away by this, but was completely underwhelmed.

According to the chalk board, they added 100kg of un-dried hops, with a waitperson giving further info that the hops were less than 12 hours from harvest to addition into the wort product stream.

A side-by-side with a bunch of keen beer-geeks (including a BJCP master judge) came to the conclusion that there were subtle difference that we were expecting to be far more dramatic.

Unintuitavely, the traditional pale ale had more hop aroma than the wet-hopped and (somewhat expected) a more malty flavour profile. The wet-hopped seem to have a more grassy, but not overly so flavour / aroma.

After getting all excited, I was left dissapointed and preferred the traditional pale ale.

Anyone else had the wet-hopped pale ale? I believe it is on tap only (and from other investigation was about 4000 litres). Maybe 100kg aroma addition of wet hops in 4000 litres shouldn't have a dramatic result? Not sure as I haven't grown / used wet hops in my own brewing (yet!) but I was expecting lot more aroma and flavour from the advertisment.

Cheers
:beer:

 

[Bizier]

I got to taste a commercial Centennial wet hop ale when I was in California, where a brewery had been offered a large amount of wet hops cheap due to another sale falling through or something, and it was awesome and incredibly fresh.

 

[mikec]

Tasmanian hops made it to a brewery in Freemantle for addition to the wort in less than 12 hours?
Stellar effort if it's true.

 

[Alex T]

Hi Guys,

The guys in Tassie did a great job - picked the hops, shoveled them out of the kiln before drying, and packed them refrigerated and got them on a courier to Hobart Airport. Hops arrived early the next morning to an awaiting wort stream.... I guess this is the first time fresh hops have been transported any distance here in Australia; I know it is happening a bit in the USA. And credit where credit is due, Cascade Brewery has been doing this for a lot of years, although of course they are within an hour drive of the hop fields.

Anyway, I've yet to taste it yet. But we all were wondering what would happen - what utilisation we would get, how grassy the hops would taste, what would the aroma be like.... and the list goes on. Given this is the first time it was a real experiment. I look forward to trying it (think the Dining Hall gets some soon) and seeing what we can conjure up next year - we now have a baseline to work from....

Cheers,

Alex