With all they hype about hops these days, its good to find people taking a new approach to this plant we’re all addicted to. Hops is a member of the Cannabaceae plant family which also includes marijuana, a fact we never tire of reminding ourselves of. Hops provides that wonderful rich floral flavor in IPAs which we love to wrap our tongues around.
The flower of hops is grown in vast quantities and compressed into pellets which brewers buy by the ton to flavor beer. Now it turns out Odell Brewing in Fort Collins Colorado has a new approach to processing hops for beer flavoring, one we feel is worth pointing out to our brewery friends.
Odell (an employee owned brewery that makes exceptionally good beers) has developed a grinder for hops flowers. They grind the flowers into a coarse powder then dump that into the mash, rather than pellets that can be fairly old before they are used. Odell claims that by using fresh hops and using the grinds immediately, they ca produce a fresher hop flavor than can be done with pellets.
Hops contains lupuline, a alkaloid compound that is a lipid (fat). This is the oily material in the hop flower that makes it sticky and it keeps it from completely drying out, and it contains the key flavors of hops.
We climbed Atalaya Mountain next to Santa Fe with some of Odell’s Rupture brew in our pack and sat in a cool breeze to try it out. We were very happy with the beer. It has a rich flowerery hop flavor and well balance dome of other flavors that we found especially appealing looking down at Santa Fe with its bustle and hustle and faint pall of juniper pollen over the town.
We’ll see if other brewers start to grind their own hops this way. Those people at Odells seem sort of crazy if you watch their video about the hop grinding. Its nice to find people doing something creative with hops other than adding excessive amounts of it to a beer.
The Rupture IPA is a welcome addition to Odell’s line up. Their flagship IPA has been toned down in recent months and has lost its hoppy zing. Now barely more than a pale ale, we had been missing the hoppy IPA. Rupture is a great replacement for the old Odell IPA, one which we hope they will keep canning for a long time.
Happy hiking, happy sipping.
