With the explosion of craft breweries in the past few years
the hop market has become very tight. Unless you are contracting your hops a
few years out you may be out of luck. This is especially true of some of the
‘hot’ hops such as Amarillo, Citra, and Sorachi Ace. Seeing the writing on the
wall early last year, we contracted for hops I’ve wanted to play with. These
include Nelson Sauvin, Amarillo, Sorachi Ace, and Galaxy. We made our first
batch of Saison using Nelson Sauvin hops two weeks ago. This is an extremely
pale Saison fermented with 10% Muscat grape must. This should be out in April.
Of course, necessity is the mother of invention. Not having
access to some popular hops in the short term forces you to dig deeper into the
hop varieties to find the hidden gems. We will be making some single hop beers
in the next year to test out some newer varieties that look very promising.
These include Australian Summer and New Zealand Moteuka. There are a few new
German varieties I have yet to see available including Mandarina Bavaria,
Hallertau Blanc, and Hüll Melon. I was able to smell the Hüll Melon at the
Craft Brewers Conference and it has a distinct cantaloupe aroma. I may be able
to get a small amount to try, stay tuned.
