Hop OZ97a: Rejected in 1960, Rejoiced in 2015?

For the Spring issue of CAMRA’s BEER magazine I wrote a feature on English hops. It looked at how the industry has shrunk to a size which threatens its ongoing existence but shows an interesting future through the research, development and breeding which takes place at Wye Hops in Kent.

Through Wye Hops, and its previous incarnation Wye College, seven new English hop varieties have become commercially available in the last 12 years. These new varieties have arrived thanks to cross-breeding and the application of new research into pest resistance and growing systems (hedgerow hops, for example, which grow lower to the ground than the typical climbing bines).

Through this breeding, around 1,400 unique seedlings a year are produced, each with potential to eventually become a variety. The vast majority don’t make it, of course, but each year a few progress to further testing – the whole process of picking the parent hops to breed with to picking a decent harvest to brew with takes 10 years. Endeavour has just come through that process and others are close behind.

There’s also the National Hop Collection (NHC), which holds 780 different varieties; some are female (it’s the female hops which are used by brewers) and some are male (just used for breeding). Some of the hops in the NHC were bred and developed years ago only to be rejected as being undesirable to brewers, others have simply been used as breeding hops because of positive qualities they give in the process without being tested for their own brewing characteristics.

Now Dr Peter Darby and his small team at Wye Hops are exploring the NHC to see what they can find, looking at rejected old varieties and testing ‘breeding’ hops for their brewing potential. One of those hops is currently known as ‘GP75’. It was used as a breeding hop years ago because of its high resistance to powdery mildew without ever having an oil analysis or flavour assessment made on it. When Dr Darby tested it he found a grapefruit-like citrus depth. Growers in the British Hop Association liked it, there was a successful pilot brew with the hop and it’s now close to farm-scale propagation.

This brings us to OZ97a.

As the issue of BEER was published, Pressure Drop Brewery in North London released a beer with the 2012 harvest of an English hop called OZ97a, or the mystery ‘Hop X’ as the brewery were calling it. Sean Ayling of Pig & Porter has also brewed a beer with the 2011 batch of this hop, as has a homebrewer in Kent. Those breweries got the hops from Kent Brewery who, in 2011, were invited to the NHC and to see the British Hop Association’s breeding programme. Being a local brewery they were interested in the local hops; being a brewery who like American-style IPAs, they were especially interested in punchy, fruity flavours from local hops.

“It is our firm belief that there is nothing to stop UK hops equalling or even surpassing the qualities of [hop varieties from US, Australia and New Zealand], and that if only we could help to encourage experimentation and development we could see a revival in the hop industry in Kent and beyond,” says Paul Herbert of Kent Brewery.

“While walking around the fields [of the National Hop Collection] I had a eureka! moment when I smelt one of the cones. Peter made a note of this and a few months later asked if we would like to take the remainder from that harvest for brewing.” With just two plants of each variety in the collection, some went for further analysis while the rest went to Kent Brewery. A little while later Paul gave some to a local homebrewer but by this time the hops were “quite old and dry” and the results weren’t as expected.  When he was also offered the 2012 harvest, “it was immediately obvious that these had much greater potential.”

As there was such a small volume of hops, Paul passed them on to Pressure Drop who used them in a simple pale ale recipes on their compact 50 litre system. “The results were exactly as we hoped, producing a taste and aroma that could stand up to the very best that the New World can throw at us.” Different batches – from the homebrew to Sean Ayling to Pressure Drop – have given apricot, pineapple, lychee, grapefruit, melon and tangerine. When I tried beers brewed by Sean and Pressure Drop I tasted all of those things and more. It’s delicate, elegant, wonderfully fragrant, fruity and utterly intriguing.   

So what’s the story behind OZ97a?

Professor Salmon ran the breeding programme at Wye College from 1906 to 1953. His work “laid the foundations for all hop breeding during the twentieth century,” writes Dr Darby in Brewery History. Prof Salmon gave us Brewers Gold, Northern Brewer, Bullion, Bramling Cross and others. Dr Darby explains: “OZ97a is a selection from Professor Salmon’s breeding programme. It was a seedling growing at position OZ97 but it was the second interesting seedling to be planted at that position over the period of his programme and so he added the letter ‘a’ to the code to distinguish it.” By the time Dr Ray Neve took over the breeding programme (he gave us Target, Challenger, Northdown and others) from Prof Salmon in 1953, OZ97a had already progressed to farm trials, which is lucky because Dr Neve re-organised the whole breeding garden and numbering system and the hop could’ve been lost. OZ97a was assessed in 1957 and 1958 and reached commercialisation stage in 1959, when it was sent for brewing trials.

Dr Darby, via British Hops

The report for this trial, published in 1960, a year after Prof Salmon died, considered three potential new varieties for their brewing qualities: one of these was released as Early Choice; another was “considered acceptable but, being sensitive to wilt disease and mosaic virus, found little favour with growers”; while OZ97a was “considered unacceptable to brewers in 1960 and it was concluded that ‘these brewing trials indicate that a number of brewers would not be willing to use this hop even at 25% replacement of their normal grist’ because ‘it has strong American flavour.’”

(Dr Darby doesn’t yet know the heritage of OZ97a but will be visiting the Wye College archives in May to find out when the original crossbreed was made and to read any of Prof Salmon’s notes on the variety. After this he’ll know more about the hops used to produce it)

“With such a damning report and without Salmon to champion his variety, it was put in the germplasm collection,” leaving just two plants. From there it’s been a fortunate survivor, making it through an outbreak of wilt disease in 1978 and a major cull of breeding materials that Dr Darby was forced to make in 2006 when Wye College was closed and Wye Hops Ltd was set up (there’s too much history to go into here but it involves government funding being dropped for Wye College and the British hop breeding industry effectively becoming self-funded as a new company, Wye Hops Ltd).

This is where it loops back into the work of Dr Darby, Wye Hops and the British Hop Association because “the hop collection is being systematically re-assessed by the British Hop Association [and] there are many hops in the collection which have never been assessed for their aroma or whose aroma was rejected in the past but where modern craft brewing might find more interest.” In 2012, the part of the collection housing OZ97a was part of the re-assessment and it was picked out blind as being suitable for tests as a dried hop, along with 12 others. “Dried samples of this hop were submitted to a panel of assessors at Charles Faram and the verdict was that it had intense pineapple and citrus notes: it was highlighted as one of the hops to consider further.” It was also selected independently by a group assessing the aroma potential of hops in the collection. Along with Paul at Kent Brewery, that makes three groups who have all selected the same hop from blind tests. “This cannot be a coincidence,” says Dr Darby.

OZ97a was rejected by the standards of 1960 but could be of considerable interest to brewers now and it will be discussed by the British Hop Association in April. “I would be quietly confident that they will arrange for OZ97a to be propagated for planting on a farm or two,” says Dr Darby. “If they do go ahead with it then it will be propagated during 2013 from our two plants in the collection and planted in 2014. Cropping will be from 2015 onwards. Until then, all that can be available is the small amount from the two mature plants in our collection.”

How many other hops were rejected 50 years ago which might be appealing to brewers today? How many wonderful varieties simply haven’t been tested for their flavour or aroma yet? Add to this the potential to then use these varieties in the breeding programme and it’s an exciting prospect. As brewers and drinkers get enticed by the juicy, fruity flavours of American and New Zealand hops, OZ97a lets us know that we can also grow them here in Britain.

The conclusion of my story in BEER was that British brewers need to use British hops or face losing them. There’s a lot being done in the industry to develop exciting new varieties and OZ97a and GP75 aren’t the only ones that we should be looking at. Hopefully the next few years are going to be very interesting and produce some wonderful new British hops with flavour profiles we haven’t tasted before, complimenting the traditional varieties we’re rightly famous for.   

Citra: A-list star to stay or one hit wonder?

If Citra hops were human, heat magazine would write about them every week. On other pages you’d see vital statistics comparing them with Nelson Sauvin, showing how the beau of 2010 is outshone by the star of 2011 (they might also point towards rising anitpodean wannabes to watch out for in 2012). It seems that almost everyone is now brewing a beer with Citra in it, but I don’t know if I like the hop that much.

Used to give a burst of the juiciest fruit in the world, Citra is delicious and unrivalled, with so much citrus and tropical fruit, but use them in large volumes and the opposite starts to happen with an intense clawing bitterness, a feral sharpness like cat’s piss (of course I’ve tried it, otherwise how could I legitimately tell you it tastes like that...) and often a dirty earthiness, like eating a muddy mango. I’ve also had a couple of Citra beers which have been unmistakeable thanks to a lime flavour jutting through the middle. Lime is ok, it adds a poke of fragrant citrus to a beer, but the trouble I’ve found is that it’s so intense that my tongue thinks it’s going to taste sour and instead along comes bitterness. It’s confusing, it’s challenging and it’s also a little bit weird.

Fyne Ales' Jarl is the best example of using Citra that I’ve tasted. Some others come close, including Oakham’s, but there’s also a niggling dirtiness left at the back of the throat, a rasping kick which makes it very clear that this is a product of the earth, and it’s that which I don’t like much.

Is Citra the king of the kettle or a one hit wonder to be quickly replaced with something new?

Working Title: Pale and Hoppy

The term Mid-Atlantic Pale Ale seems to be bandying around after Gazza proposed the name for hoppy British ales. Mid-Atlantic pale ale... Seriously? It’s almost as bad as Cascadian Dark Ale.

Firstly, mid-Atlantic, unless it’s an ironic name, drops literally in the middle of the sea (and all the way to the sea bed, if you ask me), which couldn’t be further away from a pint if it were halfway to the moon. Secondly, this term seems to be a catch-all for the pale British beers made with lots of hops from America or New Zealand (which is nowhere near the Atlantic), but also including British hops too, I assume, so perhaps it lends too much credit to the US. Thirdly, styles naturally evolve and need to have a fluidity to them and it could be the case that in a few years time these pale and hoppy beers are the normal for the style in the UK. And point four is that it just doesn’t sound very cool.

The name applies to beers brewed with 100% pale malt, highly hopped, well attenuated with a yeast that doesn’t give off many esters or other flavours “to let the hops shine without competition,” coming out somewhere between 3.5% and 8% (5% is best, he says). It’s very pale in the glass and very bitter in the mouth. It’s a mix of British and American influence and it’s a style which I love – there’s something which just works so well in a simple pale ale with lots of fruity hops, especially from the cask – and it’s the style that I most want to drink right now. I also agree with what Gazza is saying and the whole point of the article (it’s firmly a British beer just with American hop influence), but mid-Atlantic? I understand the desire to classify – we all like to stick a label on something so we can understand it (or complain about it if it isn’t right) – but surely we can come up with a more compelling name than that?

Thornbridge Brewery call Kipling a South Pacific Pale Ale and Ashford a New World Brown Ale, which works well for those, but perhaps shouldn't be extended broadly to others. In 500 Beers Zak Avery uses the term International Pale Ale, which would work with this style – it’s International, brewed in one place, taking influence and ingredients from another, but it could then become a dumping ground of a term. What’s wrong with Pale and Hoppy, New World Pale Ale or just Pale Ale, after all, it’s not exactly a new style, it’s just British Pale Ale 2.0 with different hops used in it, a natural progression, the latest fashion. How about Trans-Atlantic or Cross-Atlantic or Anglo-American if there’s a desire to say that this style is somewhere between the UK and the US (which therefore rules out the rest of the world, presumably)...

Mid-Atlantic pale ales... what do you think? Do they need their own classification and if so, what can they be called?

Image from here. I did try and photoshop in a bottle of beer bobbing around in the sea but failed remarkably.

THORNBRIDGE HALCYON IS FUCKING AWESOME!

Excuse the tabloid hyperbole and screamy capital letters, but I don’t think enough people have said just how good Thornbridge Halcyon 2009 is yet (only Zak Avery, Hopzine, Reet Good Leeds, Real Ale Reviews 'an Innocent smoothie on acid', and The Ormskirk Baron [baron rating of 5/5]). It’s a beer blogger’s dream: limited release, once a year, hotly anticipated; green-hopped with new season UK Targets (forget the US C-hop, it’s all about the UK Ts on this display); a dangerously beautiful 7.7%; a sexy new label (featuring a sneaky peak of bust); a stream of updates - promises - from the brewery on its progress: we’re brewing it soon, it’s been brewed, it’s in the conditioning tank, it’ll be a few months yet, it’s almost ready, it’s tasting great, we’re almost there, bottling Halcyon soon, bottling Halcyon now, so close, just a little longer, it tastes amazing, it’s ready to go, YOU CAN BUY THEM NOW... it’s beergasm territory, get ‘em while they’re HOT.

Remember Fruit Salad sweets? That’s what it smells like first, then pineapple, then mango, then a little grassy and floral, then a tangy, pithy, resinous bitterness stomps on through. One line of the notes has both “Mmm” and “Yum” on. The hops are super fruity and unexpected; juicy and delicious. It could threaten to get a bit sweet but the bitterness rips through and it’s all backed up with a stiff malty backbone to keep it in shape. A knife-edge balance, perfectly executed.  

It’s hyped-up and laden with heavy sacks of expectation, but the beer smashes through that (I imagine it does so with a look to the skies, an impassioned roar, a paw at the chest). Big green hops, super fruity, full-on bitterness, but always just lip-smackingly good. It’s up there with the best IPAs this year (and I’ve had some shit hot IPAs this year).

I’ve got a mixed 12-pack of this and St Petersburg (another great beer, deserving of its own upper case exclamation, no doubt – imagine you BBQ’d a bar of dark chocolate and then blitzed it up with some coffee, and loads of earthy hops, it’s real goood, in a dirrrty kind of way, like eating in bed) but I’m seriously tempted to go back to myBrewerytap and order some more (especially as they’re now selling Marble, too).

The Hop Press: Dangerously Bitter

I’ve been lazy with my Hop Press blog recently but I’m back on it this week. Essentially it’s a re-hashing of a blog which I wrote early last year (an important post which made me realise that beer was more than just a taste experience) with a few tweaks. It’s about how bitterness is innately a warning of poison and how this increases the enjoyment of hoppy beers.

Here’s the full post.

What do you think? Am I a bit crazy here or is there something addictive about big hops that keeps you going back for more? That smack of bitterness which craves sweetness - the unending cycle of drinking for pleasure and ‘pain’ that makes a great IPA.

Dark Star Six Hop

Dark Star's Six Hop is one of the best beers I’ve drunk so far this year, whether in the UK or California, from anywhere in the world, dispensed from the bottle, can, keg or cask. It truly was a stunning glassful, a perfectly hand-pulled cask ale. It’s 6.5%, six-times hopped, a February special from the Sussex brewery. It shines in the glass, one of those pints that’s alive with colour and condition, a crown of frothing bubbles settling above. It’s a full bowl of tropical fruit, grapefruits, oranges and peaches, it’s fresh like spring, floral and grassy, it has hints of sweetness but never too much, the bitterness is bold but not brash, it’s smooth, it’s crisp, it’s dry and quenching yet and mouth-filling and lip-smacking. A complete triumph – if you see it, drink it.

I had this in The Bull where an Oakham Inferno was a great start and a Pictish Porter with a wonderful dry, roasty bitterness was on top form. I also got myself a bottle each of the Marble Decadence Kriek and Frambozen. That was my reward for following Lauren around the shops all day.

Where the wild hops grow

A sunny day, quiet. Let’s go for a walk. The birds chatter, the breeze rustles, the barley moves in a dance across the field, an old car chugs past, the driver smiles. Just a little further up, that’s where the wild hops grow.

Jade green leaves; perfect clusters of gold; thick, rubbery branches; berries behind ready to stain fingers purple. The hops; picked and pressed between the fingers they leave their resin, sticking with the soft, giving skin; fragrant with lemon pith, herbs, wood, grass.

What are they like?

Make a beer just for them. Something light, pale. Something to show off whatever it is, however it’ll taste. Will it be bitter, will it be aromatic? Will it be subtle or not, high alpha or not? Will it be citrusy or earthy, fruity or spicy? There’s no way to know. Not until it’s brewed, not until you can drink it.

It’s the unknown, that’s what’s exciting. There’s no control; it’s leaving it to that secret wild unknown to change the brew, to give its unique quality, to make it; a magic ingredient.

That’s the Romance of it. Not knowing what you will get. A blind date. A shut-your-eyes-and-hold-out-your-hands, I’ve got a surprise. It’s crafted but the result is a lottery and even the maker has no idea. Brew the beer, use the hops, wait.

When it’s ready you get the first taste. It’s pale and alive, the aroma is subtle but dig deeper and there’s strawberries, barley, a light floral quality. Taste it. Sweet, crisp, refreshing, a little dryness at the end. The hops nudge by, not big, not abrasive, but gentle. It’s saying ‘come find me’, it’s saying ‘come get me’. It’s so drinkable; chase it around the glass because there’s a hidden mystery to it. The hops seem illusive but they are there, playful. ‘Come get me’, they say.

Barry Bit the Bullet and made a Münsterlander Wild-Hopped Ale (with the addition of some Hallertauer Perle, just in case – I campaigned for 100% wild, but what do I know, I was just wooed by the idea of the unknown!). From the moment I knew about it I wanted to try it. I felt the Romance of it, the possibilities of the unknown. Thankfully, and very gratefully, Barry sent some over and I’ve now tried it. It certainly Romanced me!

Smoking Hops

I knew that hops were related to cannabis. This was just something I picked up on the way. I only realised quite how similar they were when I decided to smoke a few.

I was inspired by two sources, one was Stefan Gates’ Biscuit Tin Smoked Salmon from Gastronaut and the other was a post on the Thornbridge Brewers’ blog. The idea was simple: cook fish in the smoke of some fresh hops. Just like wood smoking with a twist. I got the hops from Pete, who got them from Hopdaemon Brewery. They were Cascades. I bought myself a fat piece of cod. I engineered myself a makeshift smoker. I was ready to go.

Stefan Gates uses an old biscuit/sweet tin and wire. I neither had an old sweet tin or wire so I grabbed a wok, lots of tin foil and the wire rack from the grill. Makeshift, like I said. I made a nest out of tin foil for the hops so they couldn’t escape, filling it with as many as I could. I placed this inside a huge wok and put the wire rack on top. For a lid I used more tin foil. Then I just lit the hob and let it heat up, placing the fish on the rack and covering to smoke for about 10 minutes. It’s easy.
The Cascade hops in their pre-smoked state were wonderfully earthy, spicy and fragrant with citrus, which I hoped this would come through into the fish. As the hops stated to warm up all the citrus aromas came out, this then turned into sweet tobacco, then to a massively worrying cannabis-perfumed cloud (‘Honestly officer, I’m just making my dinner’). This fug was when I was acutely aware of the relationship between hops and cannabis, but this soon developed into the relaxing smell of bonfires and burning, fresh wood.

Ten-minutes, and a kitchen full of smoke, later and it was done. But the taste? It’s really unique, interesting and powerful, unlike any other smoke flavour I’ve had before. Beyond the sweet fish it had the taste of a smell: bonfire smoke on a cold evening, plus faint hints of earthiness and even a little dry, herby, burnt citrus. I had mine with spicy noodles and a bottle of Jaipur which was fabulous with the fish - just sweet enough to soften any harsh edges.
It was an interesting experiment, that’s for sure, and something I want to try again. I was left worrying about possible after-effects of smoke inhalation which was perpetuated by a self-fulfilling paranoia (Am I going to get paranoid? I think I’m paranoid… Why aren't I paranoid?) and the fact that I couldn’t find anything about hop smoking online. There was some moderate panic that I may have also gassed myself and that I'd pass out any minute. All was well in the end though, I'm happy to report.

Some words of warning: I got into a lot of trouble for doing this. The house reeked of sticky, thick, sordid smoke for days. Pretty much everything had to be cleaned, including the actual fan extractor above the hob. But don’t let this put you off, just learn from my mistakes. Firstly, keep it covered so that the smoke doesn’t escape. Secondly, keep it covered so the smoke doesn’t escape! It’s the smoke which smells. It’ll be cooked in 10 minutes but leave it for longer if that worries you, just keep it covered. If you can use a sweet tin then I’m sure the smell wouldn’t be so bad, or it will at least be contained in its own little space. Alternatively, cook it on the barbeque.

A Glourious Weekend

The sun has been high, bright and hot for ages now and it’s bloody lovely. This weekend has been especially glourious. Thursday it was The Bull for their West Kent Pub of the Year celebration. The cask line-up was superb, as promised, but I was taught me a valuable lesson by the English IPAs: I am not immune to hop bitterness. It was the combination of Pictish Simcoe (wonderful, bitter, fruity) and (a one-off cask of) Marble’s Tawny 3 (seriously one of the most bitter beers I’ve had) plus the jerk chicken which saw my soporific, hoporific demise and left me all hopped out (but it was well worthy it as all the beers were wonderful, including, of course, Marble Pint). Cask Worthington White Shield was a rare and glourious treat of a scoop. Friday I visited an old favourite: The Man of Kent in Rochester. This place sells up to eight cask beers from Kent plus German lagers, Meantime keg, Fruli, cider and a fridge of bottles. All my cask beers were great (Gadds No.5, Gadds’ Seasider and Whitstable East India Pale Ale) and a bottle of Rochefort 10 went down a glourious treat in the garden after sunset, playing board games with a couple of old mates. Saturday I went to see Tarantino’s new film, Inglourious Basterds, and it’s honestly one of the best films I’ve ever seen. It’s a complete love letter to cinema and the power of film and reminded me so much of Jean-Luc Godard’s films of the early 1960s. There’s so much that I want to write about this film and I attempted to do so but it started sounding like an essay I’d write at university (I studied the French New Wave and Godard…) so I stopped. It’s tight, sharp, funny, tense, beautiful (Melanie Laurent), well acted, mesmerizing (those long takes, the sweeping shots, the perfect cutting), brutal… Seriously, this film is a complete masterpiece and the final line of the film is utter, glourious perfection. And then Sunday. Sunny Sunday when England won the ashes. It was a very proud day to be an Englishman and I celebrated with a bottle of Cantillon Kriek and then a Speakeasy Big Daddy IPA from San Francisco, which I will freely admit is terrible planning on my part. I should’ve cracked a Gadds’ Reserve or maybe a JJJ. Still, what a result, and what a glourious weekend. The ashes picture is from here. The beer picture is from my phone. It shows the line-up of beers at The Bull, plus there were a few in the cellar or on the other side of the bar – Darkstar APA, Whim Flower Power. The movie poster is from here. I have no picture of the Man of Kent, but that's glourious too, or glorious, whatever.

Plin Love

Just a midweek quickie about a brief love affair I had with a gorgeous Californian babe. I’ll never forget her. Although I’ve heard that her Younger sister is pretty tasty too...

Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger were top of the ‘I want these beers’ list I gave to my mate Lee when he went to San Francisco. To my supreme delight he managed to get me a Pliny the Elder and soon became my hero. I opened the beer a few weeks ago and oh-my-goodness let me tell you this: it was one of the finest beers I’ve tasted.

It’s 8%ABV with a deep gold colour and a beautiful oh-so alluring aroma-vault of juicy citrus, tropical fruit, pine and grapefruit pith. The balance over the palate is what makes this beer special: it’s so fruity and this dives quickly into the bitterness - the sappy dryness of pine, loads of citrus, loads of tropical fruit - but beneath all of this freshness is a huge malty base of biscuit, bread and caramel; a sweet buffer for all that quenching and clinging bitterness. It’s so smooth to drink too. Fizz pisses me off and I have a low threshold for it, but this was just brilliantly, elegantly clean. My tasting notes are peppered with superlatives, ending with ‘an amazing beer’.

While we’re here, Pliny the Younger is currently the 2nd best beer on the BeerAdvocate best of list (PtE has risen up to number 8! And PtY is pretty high up Rate Beer's best too). Of course this is because so many drinkers have rated it so highly, but why is that? It can’t just be because it’s such a good beer, can it? Look at the rest of the list (Westvleteren 8 and 12, some Dark Lords…) and you’ll see a mystique surrounding a lot of the beers. But why PtY? Well, I read over at The Beer Nut’s place, in this post, that the Younger was only released on draft this year. Ah, now I see why. This means that drinkers have to go in search of it which instantly raises their anticipation of it (hunter-gatherer style) – it is coveted. Add to this that the hype is already huge (the hype is very affecting) and the fact that an 11% IPA is going to leave you feeling pretty happy (the fun-time/drunkenness/remember-the good-stuff-and-make-it-better proportional scale) and I think you get the drift. Although, if it’s anything like the Elder - only better! - then I totally get why it’s there in that position.

Oh, and I also got Russian River’s Blind Pig IPA. A 6.0% beauty along the same lines at the Elder. It’s a glass of orange, pine and grapefruit, fresh and juicy but dry and bitter. The malt isn’t in-your-face which means it isn’t cloying, but it still has a mouth-filling thickness which is addictively moreish. It doesn’t get top billing in this post but it’s still a super beer.

I really hope Russian River start shipping beers to the UK soon…

Bitterness

“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.” Martin Luther King.

I’ve found myself more and more drawn towards getting a huge smack of bitterness in my beer drinking. The hop is an addictive little chap, calling me back for more and more. But when I was drinking a particularly gorgeous but aggressive American IPA last week it got me thinking…

The beer was Ruination IPA from Stone Brewing Company in San Diego. It’s incredible. The bottle announces it as ‘A liquid poem to the glory of the hop’; it’s more of an anthem. It scores over 100 in the International Bittering Units scale and that’s a lot (lager scores 5-15, a ‘standard’ IPA around 50).

It pours a sexy bronze colour with a large lacing head; it’s a great looking beer. The aroma is huge with fresh oranges, grapefruit, pineapple and pine - the nose is intoxicating on its own. Sweet malt hits the tongue first and this is bready and full of caramel, but it’s soon overtaken by the massive hops: oranges and grapefruit; juice, flesh and pith; a long, clingy-bitter, dry, zingy, zesty finish. It’s just so drinkable, gluggable, well balanced. An awesome beer, but certainly not for those who are aren’t hop-lovers; it’ll blow your socks off!

All that bitterness got my brain going. Now I’m certainly no scientist, but here’s my basic understanding, with a beer slant put on it.

As kids we hate that bitter twang at the back of our mouths, but we love sweetness. As our palates develop we acquire the taste for bitter flavours, such as citrus, coffee and dark chocolate. It is innately within us to avoid bitter tastes. To our distant ancestors bitterness (usually when tasted from a plant) was bad and it signaled the possibility of poison; if it tasted bitter we avoided it incase it harmed us.

So what happens when we drink an aggressively bitter beer? Our bodies innate response would be to throw out warning alarms to let us know of potential danger. The chemical mechanisms would say: ‘Watch out, that could be poisonous!’ and then the brain and body need to make a life-critical decision about whether it’s safe to continue or not. The trouble is that underneath the bitterness is a whole load of sweetness, and sweetness = good. So there’s even more chemicals and decisions flying around: it’s good/bad, life/death.

We take another sip to be sure. We experience it like this: sweet first on the tip of our tongue, brief but powerful, but then as the beer moves over the tongue it hits the bitter-taste receptors right at the back of the mouth and down the throat. The bitter area dominates that part of our palate (it’s the last thing we taste before we swallow) and so the bitterness stays around for the longest, especially in a strongly hopped beer.

Now, whatever it decides, the body is flooded with chemicals simultaneously. It gets a ‘Go’ signal from the sweetness, but a ‘Stop’ from the bitterness. On top of this, sweetness actually dramatises the sensation of bitterness. So a beer that has a high ABV will generally have a depth of sweetness which then impacts upon the sensation of the bitterness. Here’s what your brain might be deciphering: ‘If this is bitter - which it most certainly is - then it could be poison. Maybe I’ll take another sip to be sure. Wait a minute! It’s sweet too… and it tastes so good, so how can anything bad be so delicious?’ Again there is a flood of chemicals, a mass of decision making.

Yet we know that it’s alright. We bought it from the store. It’s made to be enjoyed. It’s just the body isn’t fine-tuned to think that way.

As I see it, we have a delicious beer which is intoxicating, strong, sweetly malt but bitterly hopped. It tastes mighty fine but the chemical mechanisms still aren’t convinced, they’re still on alert. So your brain is caught in between two ways of thinking: fight or flight (fight means drink and enjoy!). This double-trouble, dual thinking can surely only be a good thing for our enjoyment of the beer. We’re on high alert over the flavour, but we’re also alertly enjoying it because it is so full of flavour. The life-critical decision is to fight it, to drink that highly-hopped masterpiece and to enjoy every last sip, even if your brain is still having niggling doubts. It also gives us a burst of adrenaline and everyone loves a bit of that.

Drinking an exceptionally bitter IPA is like being on a roller-coaster: you love it, but your body is in a state of heightened arousal, worried for your death, which then increases your enjoyment even more, in a masochistic kind-of way. Maybe I love the smack of puckering bitterness, maybe I’m addicted to the thrill of it.