Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Summer Hops - Tasting Notes

Up next for tasting notes is Summer. This is a fairly new Australian variety that I picked up on a whim because the description intrigued me. The pellets I used were 5.9% AA from Austin Homebrew Supply. The pellets had an herbal/noble-type smell with some sweet spice and some faint floral/fruit notes.

The aroma of the finished beer had notes of vanilla, leather, and earthiness. It also seems to really enhance the bready/toasty munich malt character.

On the palate I picked up cedar, vanilla, some dry spiciness and woody notes. Bittering level was moderate.

I was really surprised by my results with Summer. It was nothing like the apricot and melon descriptions I had read. I'm really not sure what to make of it, but the hop character I was getting from this beer is quite unique. It would fit in really well in English styles, but I could see it working well in dark beers, wood-aged beers, Brett-aged beers. I'm actually tempted to dry-hop a dunkelweizen with it as well. I'd be interested to see how this blends with other hop varieties.

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