Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Hop Project #20 out in bottles, and on tap this Thursday

Bottles marked as "Bottled on week 1 in September": For #20, we used Zeus as mash hops, then First Gold and Galena at the beginning of the boil; Ahtanum and First Gold at 30 minutes; and Cascade and Ahtanum with five minutes left. We then dry-hopped with Ahtanum.

It's not as dank as #19 was, and the bitterness is very Cascade-like. Ahtanum is sometimes recommended as a substitute for Cascade so we tried it as a dry-hop to get a full sense of its flavor. As far as the Zeus - I'm still not sold on using hops in the mash. Sometimes when we try it, we get a mellower, fuller hop flavor, but I'm not picking up that in this Project. But hey, that's why we keep experimenting, and thanks for coming along for the ride. Maybe one day we will hit upon THE ABSOLUTE KILLER IPA recipe and stop experimenting with our Hop Project series, but we are having too much fun with it to stop now.

#21 is going to be the Return of the Fresh Hop. My hop grower friend in Yakima is sending us 200 lbs of fresh wet Amarilllo hops this week. We should be brewing it on Thursday, and it will be bottled the last week of September. If you come by the taproom this Thursday afternoon, your clothes will probably never get the hop smell out of them again. Hop Project #20 in your glass, and #21 in the air. Like that's a bad thing?!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dunno, HP #20 is more dank than you give it credit. I think you're just being modest. I personally am going to scour the local Kroger's and stock up. I wish I knew where else you sold it!

Anonymous said...

whole foods has hop #20 bottles. i liked #19 a lot. can't wait for fresh hop