When I first walked into The Shop, I was greeted with a very tasty homebrewed beer, by our host and this weeks instructor. When the rest of the class settled in we began discussing this week’s focus, hops. The latin name for hops is Humulus Lupulus, which is a bit of a mouthful so I’ll stick with hops for the purpose of this post. From Amarillo to Zythos, there are far too many varieties for me to recall from my hop head. For our conveniance, hops are put into the three basic groupings: Noble (Central European in origin), English and Amercian. In more recent years, there have been quite a few exciting hops coming from Australia and New Zealand; Nelson Sauvin being my personal favorite for its tropical fruit, and white wine like aroma and flavors.

Hops are used in three forms in the brewing process: whole cone (plucked and dried), plug (think small hockey puck) and pellet (these look like rabbit food). They add three important aspects to beer, aroma, flavor and bitterness. Hops can be, and are used throughout the brewing process. Mostly during the boil of the soon to be beer, called wort. The earlier additions of hops provide bitterness, hops added somewhere around mid-boil provide flavor and the additions nearing the end of the boil provide aroma. They can also be added to beer a few days before it is bottled or kegged in a process called dry hopping, this adds outstanding aroma and is used in many styles of beer. I could go on and into more detail, but all this talk is making me thirsty. On to the samples.