* Introducing Erebus
* Random observation: Hops and health
* Hop profile: Mistral
* Recipe: Old World’s Mantra
* Additional reading
Welcome to Vol. 8, No. 7. In the current (Nov/Dec) issue of The New Brewer, I posed the question, “Remember Delta, Sylva, Ultra, Santium, Banner or Smaragd?” The point of asking the question in a story about newly named cultivars, or ones that may earn a name, is that it is not always obvious which will endure. They are going to keep coming, and sustainability is going to continue to be more important.
“If we don’t do this, somebody will,” said Ben Smith at B&D Farms, one of five farms that are partners in West Coast Hop Breeding. “Everybody out there breeding (hops) is doing some good. We are going to solve problems.”
On the flip side, right now I’m working on a story for Brewing Industry Guide about a variety that was released more than a century ago. It was a high impact hop, and in more than one way, before anybody talked about high impact hops. More after the story is published.
HOPSTEINER NAMES A ‘BOLD DISRUPTOR’
It might be just me, but as I noted at HopQueries.com on Oct. 31, it seems appropriate that Hopsteiner chose Halloween to announce that a cultivar previous known as HS16660 will be called Erebus, the primordial deity of darkness in Greek mythology. A press release states, she “embodies the essence of its chaotic origins, serving as a bold disruptor to the world of hops.”
Brewers are going to be interested in the blueberry, citrus, candied fruit and floral/rose character the hop provides. She contains 8-11% alpha acids, 3-4% beta acids and 2.3-2.8 ml/100g essential oil (including an usually high amount of geraniol).
Erebus is Hopsteiner’s third release — along with Helios and Alora — in three years. All three benefit from research identifying genetic markers. The company’s breeders used those markers to select multiple disease resistant traits, resulting in stacked resistance. Because the plants have multiple layers of protection from mildews, the amount of chemical fungicide applications required to protect them is reduced.
HOPS ARE BETTER FOR YOUR HEALTH THAN BEER IS
National Geographic posted a story last month about “beer’s secret superpower” and the potential health benefits of hops. I would have provided a link in additional reading, but the story is behind a paywall. So here goes:
– Dozens of laboratory and animal studies and a few small ones in people make clear that hops compounds have antimicrobial, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, and blood-sugar regulating properties.
– Antioxidants make up 14 percent of the plant. Researchers are particularly interested in xanthohumol, which they’ve been examining for more than 20 years.
– Feeding xanthohumol to obese male rats lowers blood glucose levels; the higher the dose, the larger the effect. Adding a mixture of hops’ antioxidants to lipid cells prevents the low-density lipoprotein or “bad” cholesterol from oxidizing, blunting its damage. And giving obese rats xanthohumol with a high-fat diet avoids the increases in unhealthy triglyceride blood fats and weight gain they otherwise see.
– Xanthohumol has also been found to impact cancer cells, including those for lung, colon, thyroid, and ovarian cancers.
– The few human studies that exist have increased interest in hops compounds. When prediabetic people in Japan took either a daily supplement comprised of hops’ bitter acids or a placebo for three months, the hops group reduced fasting blood glucose and A1C (a longer-term measure of blood sugar), while levels in the placebo group remained steady.
– There are still more studies, but one thing that does not change is that even hop-forward beers contain only four to five milligrams of xanthohumol. The amount of alcohol a drinker would need to consume to get the benefits would more than offset those benefits. But what about non-alcoholic beer? There is a catch. “The paradox regarding alcohol is a lot of the healthy ingredients in beer are more easily absorbed in the presence of alcohol,” said Zugravu Corina-Aurelia, a physician and researcher at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest.
HOP PROFILE: MISTRAL
I’m not sure that “French pils” is destined to become more than a novelty, but it seems as if using a hop like Mistral could provide a modern twist. If you look across the family trees of the hops available, you will see Brewer’s Gold and Fuggle somewhere in the heritage of cultivar after cultivar.
You’ll also find Cascade in more recent crosses made in breeding programs outside the United States. Huell Melon, Mandarina Bavaria and Halltertau Blanc from Germany are all daughters of Cascade. Many of the new varieties from hop merchant Charles Faram in England are offspring of Cascade. As are Mistral and Elixir from the French company Comptoir Agricole.
Heritage: Peter Darby, former head of research as Wye Hops in England, also worked with Comptoir agricole before retiring, and made the cross in 2009 as well as the initial seedling selection in Alsace in 2011 to go to field plots. Mistral is a seedling of Cascade crossed with a male seedling from Strisselspalt. Mistral and Loral from the Hop Breeding Company are both granddaughters of Strisselspalt.
The basics: 6.5-8.5% alpha acids, 3.1-3.8% beta acids, 0.8-1.5 mL/100 grams total oil.
Aroma qualities: Citrus, rose, melon, lychee. Comptoir agricole recommends using Mistral in a variety of top fermenting beers, such as IPA and saison, and notes she is ideal in dry-hopped beers. That does not rule out Alsatian-Style Pilsner, whatever that is.
RECIPE: OLD WORLD’S MANTRA
I don’t plan to make recipes a regular feature in Hop Queries. It comes from “For the Love of Hops.” If you already own the book (thank you), you already have the recipe. If you don’t, this is a suggestion you might want to buy it.
Ivan de Baets from Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels provided the recipe. He eschews the words “beer style,” but ask him the question most brewers duck, what his favorite is, and he’s quick to answer. He loves bracing, bitter beers from Great Britain; not exactly surprising given how much he appreciates bitterness itself, a quality apparent in Brasserie de la Senne beers.
“If this recipe gives a hoppy beer, it is in balance,” he said. “To me a beer should replace water to refresh you. A little bit mood altering, too, but I don’t want to go too far.”
Original gravity: 12 °P (1.048)
Final gravity: 3 °P (1.012)
IBU: ~50
ABV: 5.2%
Grain bill:
82% pilsner malt
12% Munich malt (25 EBC)
6% crystal malt (120 EBC)
Mashing:
50° C (122° F), 15 minutes
63° C (145° F), 45 minutes
72° C (162° F), 20 minutes
78° C (172° F), 5 minutes
Hops:
Challenger, beginning of boil, 300 g/hL
Styrian Golding, 10 minutes before end of boil, 150 g/hL
Styrian Golding and Bramling Cross, whirlpool or hop back, 100 g/hL each
Water: Hard
Boiling: 75 minutes, hard boil
Yeast: Neutral. Highly attenuative. Flocculent
Fermentation: Maximum temperature 26° C (79° F).
Lagering: 4 weeks at 10° C (50° F)
Packaging: Refermentation in the bottle. 2.5 volumes CO2 (5g/L)
ADDITIONAL READING
– Sustaining UK hops. Asahi UK and the Worshipful Company of Brewers have teamed up with the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and the University of Warwick to fund two PhD research projects looking at how to develop sustainable approaches to British hop production in a bid to stop the further demise of the UK’s hop growing industry.
– Tacos & Beer: Fueling the Yakima Valley’s Hop Harvest. “In the brewing industry, it takes plenty of great tacos to make great beer. During harvest, Yakima Valley hop farms invite brewers to their ranches to hand-select hop varieties, treating them to tacos and tamales every bit as memorable as just-picked Citra hops.” Eating tacos on a hop farm is pretty much an insider thing, but Los Hernández Tamales and Los Panchos (both mentioned in the story) welcome regular folks and are worth seeking out.