On part 2 of the IPA special we discuss various hop varieties, mostly the ones important to brewing IPA style beers.
Hops
SPEAKERS
Connor Brekke, Dylan Schafer
Connor Brekke 00:07
Hello, everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous a show where we discuss a variety of topics regarding alcohol. From specific beer styles, distillation, the brewing process, wine, spirits, and even a history of certain liquor laws, there's a fascinating world to explore. On today's episode, we kick off part two of our IPA special where we discuss various types of hops. Joining me today is Dylan Schafer, owner of Dialectic Brewing Company here in Mandan, North Dakota. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to, The Ombibulous.
Connor Brekke 00:49
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the show. I'm joined once again with Mr. Dylan Schafer of Dialectic here in Mandan. And we're going to continue our IPA special with a little discussion about hops. All about hops today.
Dylan Schafer 01:04
Yeah, in case you guys didn't know that's that really is what makes an IPA and IPA is the hops.
Connor Brekke 01:10
Would you say that it makes people... hoppy?
Dylan Schafer 01:17
It sure makes me hoppy so... But yeah, there, those hops are definitely kind of the critical component of the IPA style. Generally speaking, when you're looking at beer styles, you're going to have some beers that are more, what we call "malt forward." So getting more of their flavor characteristics from the grain itself. Then you're going to have beers that are going to be more "hop forward," where you're getting more of the flavor profile from the particular hop varieties that we're using. And for everyone who's really new to the, to the beer scene, or to the brewing at all... hops are just the the herb or the flower that gives beer it's bitterness to balance out the sweetness of the malt in there. We do also have beers that are going to have dominant flavor characteristics coming from other additives, lactose, fruit, things like that. But generally speaking, you are going to see a beer that is either malt forward or hop forward. And IPAs are kind of the quintessential hop forward beer, for sure. And there's just a huge, kind of wide variety of different characteristics you can get from those hops, depending on what particular strain of hops you're using. So that being said, I will, I'll make a note that all hops are not created equal. Well, I love the flavor profile of just about every hop variety I've ever brewed with. They're very, very, very different depending on the strain you get. And there's... oh man, dozens, if not hundreds of unique hop strains that are out on the market today. And every single year, the industry is coming out with new experimental varieties of hops. And that definitely seems to be a trend nowadays is to get ahold of those new experimental ones and start brewing with them as soon as you possibly can.
Connor Brekke 03:10
And it sounds like you have a new distributor, and you have, sounds like, some better access to some of this stuff now.
Dylan Schafer 03:19
Absolutely. So up until this this last year... here at Dialectic, we've been buying all of our hops as what we call" spot hops." Which is basically you look over, you know, go to a company, look over what hops they have available, pick and choose what you want. And whatever they have available, they'll ship out to you. Most of the larger breweries... honestly, most breweries you see that are anywhere over seven barrels are going to typically have a hop contract. So they have a contract with a farm or a distributor. And they're guaranteed to get "X" amount of hops and "X" amount of varieties. And those contracts are really one of the only ways that you can secure some of these high demand varietals. So with my contract this year, things like the Mosaic hops I wasn't able to get ahold of for like two years. Let's see... the Citra is another one I couldn't get ahold... since we opened, I haven't been able to find Citra on spot hops. Simcoe. And a lot of these experimental varieties that you'll typically see with a letter and... or a letter and number code for the experimental variety before it actually gets its name. So like Mosaic hops was an "HBC," followed by three numbers was its code for the longest time before it kind of became widely accepted, and it got given a name in the market. So having that contract is really really nice because I can get a consistent supply of hops because it is always a bummer when you go and brew a recipe and does I have a recipe for an IPA around a particular hop that you have on hand at the time. And then when you go to reorder hops, you can't get a hold of that hop. And that recipe kind of goes... out the window. And it's, again, with the difference in hop varieties... if the substitute in a different hopper that it's gonna be a noticeably different beer most of the time. There are some general substitutions that you can do. But most of the time, you'll notice if you change up the hop varietal.
Connor Brekke 05:28
It's always nice to have consistency. Especially when you have you know, a business like this where it's nice to make your style and then keep it consistent instead of swinging all over the place with different flavor profiles for different quality of ingredients.
Dylan Schafer 05:43
Absolutely, and it's nice to you know, I love brewing new styles, but when I brew an IPA that that sells like hotcakes, and it just flies out of the faucet and it's... the batch is gone right away. It's a bummer when you have to you know, I love writing a new recipe... but if I know that recipe sells I just assume brew that recipe again instead of having to change everything up.
Connor Brekke 06:04
Now as far as IPA hops go, is there any particular like characteristic that you want to look for in hops for IPAs? I mean, I imagine it's like anything, let's just grapes where you have to have certain soil conditions, weather conditions, all this stuff to make a particular grape for a particular wine. I imagine hops are somewhat similar?
Dylan Schafer 06:27
Absolutely. And one thing of note is that a vast majority of the hops that are commercially used in the United States are grown in the Yakima Valley out west. So as far as soil, climate, things like that, that kind of is the the primo hop drawing spot is out in the Yakima Valley. So a lot of our stuff is coming from there. Then generally speaking, hops do have a couple different qualities that when brewing an IPA, you want to pay attention to these different qualities. So a big one being it's alpha acid content. So the alpha acids in that hop, which is simply an amino acid, the alpha acids, and the hop variety is what's going to give the beer its bitterness. So a higher alpha acid hop is going to contribute more bitterness. So typically, when we're brewing a West Coast IPA where we're looking for that 75 to 100, IBUs... it only makes sense to target some higher alpha acid hops. So, for comparison's sake, we're looking at alpha acid ranges, you know, anywhere from nine and a half, I've seen them all the way up to almost 15% alpha acid. So those are going to be considered a high alpha acid bittering hop as we like to call them. For your late addition, hops, your alpha acids are not going to matter as much, because you're not necessarily looking to extract bitterness, you're looking for more flavor qualities. And so you can usually when you're purchasing hops, you can get all the breakdown of the different essential oils that are in hops, because those essential oils are what's going to give you your flavor components, depending on what types of oils are in that hop and what concentrations. And I know I mentioned kind of bittering hops and late addition hops. That's another thing that's kind of an important distinction when brewing an IPA. So when brewing an IPA, you're going to typically be adding hops throughout the entirety of the boil of the beer. But once all the grain is mashed, and we got our liquid transferred over to the boil kettle, is when we start adding hops, Any hops that are added early on in the boil, so say we're doing a 60 minute boil, which is pretty common for me on a lot of my IPAs. Any of the hops that are added in that first kind of half hour of that boil are going to contribute some significant bitterness. The longer you boil them, the more bitterness you get out of them. And then you're late addition, hops are going to be the hops that are kind of added in the last 10 minutes of the boil. And those are going to contribute very little bitterness, but they're going to give you all your flavor and aroma qualities in there. So in general, we're looking for kind of high alpha acid hops to do the bittering job. And then we can use high alpha acid hops for the late addition depending on what their flavor qualities are. Or we can use lower alpha acid hops for the late addition. Again, just targeting specific flavor qualities that we're looking for in a recipe.
Connor Brekke 09:31
See, folks there's a lot more to brewing than just throwing something in a tub. There's a lot of chemistry involved.
Dylan Schafer 09:37
There is yeah, and I always say that's my favorite thing about brewing beer is it's like the perfect perfect balance of art and craft and then hard science as well because I like both of them.
Connor Brekke 09:47
You get to drink your product when you're done.
Dylan Schafer 09:50
That's always a nice perk too.
Connor Brekke 09:52
So going back to the addition of hops you know, be during the boil after the boil... I had a Interesting style in the cities. couple years back, they call it a "zero IPA." Is there anything you could tell us about that one? I know it has to something to do with what we're just talking about.
Dylan Schafer 10:11
Yeah, absolutely. So the the zero IPA... and I've actually brewed a version of zero IPA here as well. And the idea is you're going to brew an IPA that has zero IBUs. So again, the IBUs is the International Bitterness Units. And that's going to be a measurement of how much bitterness is in the beer coming from the hops. That's not to say a beer with zero IBUs has no bitterness at all, because some grains will add some bitterness and stuff like that as well. So, generally speaking though, IBU is going to be your range of how much bitterness from hops is in the beer. And a "zero IPA" is going to have a target of zero IBUs. And basically how you achieve that is, essentially by not boiling any of the hops. When you boil the hops, those alpha acids are extracted into the solution, and that gives you bitterness. If you don't boil the hops, you're going to just get all the flavor and aroma components without the bitterness. So what most people do, you'll occasionally see on zero IPAs, where folks do some what we call "first round mash hopping." And so in that process, instead of doing just the grain in the mash ton, where we steep everything, you'll also add some hops in with the barley as you steep everything, usually right around 150 degrees. The temperatures aren't high enough to extract the alpha acids out of the hops, but you'll pull out some of those essential oils for flavor and aroma. The most common way to get all the hot flavor and aroma without bitterness, however, is from what we call dry hopping. And dry hopping is just simply adding hops to beer after the boil phase, and typically after fermentation as well. Then once the beers done boiling, is cooled down to fermentation temperatures, and in the fermenter, than adding hops in there. Again, it's cool enough, so you're not extracting any alpha acids. You're just pulling out those essential oils to give you your flavor and aroma components. And it is a fun style because, you know, a lot of folks who are turned off by IPAs, I found are typically turned off by the bitterness of IPAs. And a zero IPA is a great way to understand what kind of flavors and aromas you get out of hops without getting all that bitterness that turns people away.
Connor Brekke 12:36
I think that's what drew me to that style. Because you guys were only open, I think about maybe a year. And then I took a trip to the cities... and I fell in this style and was like, "Oh, I don't know what this is. But I have to try it because I got to try different things." It's like, "Oh, this is pretty good." I don't get hit with that bitterness. So that would explain a lot... why it was not bitter.
Dylan Schafer 12:59
Yeah. And you actually brought me some of that. Some zero IPA back and after drinking it. I was... that gave me some inspiration to kind of brew one of our own zero IBU IPAs here at Dialectic too.
Connor Brekke 13:12
Yeah, I tried to be sometimes the beer ambassador. Sometimes if I can bring him back different styles. It's just fun, you know, the more cross tasting and collaboration, it just brings new ideas to the table, and it brings new things for the community.
Dylan Schafer 13:29
Oh, yes. And the craft beer industry is exactly that. It's more of a community than it is an industry. So we love collaborating with other brewers and get an input from other folks. And anywhere you can find inspiration from this kind of free game. And I love that about this craft beer community.
Connor Brekke 13:49
And you've, speaking of the community, you had a style that you made called the Hop Doctor. And that has an interesting story behind how you acquired it and how you created it.
Dylan Schafer 14:02
Yeah, and that was... so in general, that was a fun style. Because I went with a little bit more traditional approach so that so I will say this, the Hop Doctor was a pale ale versus an India Pale Ale that we were talking about previously. And the Pale Ale again is going to be a slightly less hoppy version and lower alcohol version of the India Pale Ale. And so our hop doctor was actually an English Pale Ale, so fermented out with English yeast, and which gives it its own unique characteristic. And then for hop varietals, we actually used a bunch of locally grown hops that were grown right here in Bismarck Mandan. There's a local doctor at the hospital who hobby grows hops, he doesn't brew with them or anything, but he just likes growing them. And he grows a pretty significant amount of them. So we did a full seven barrel batch of beer with all his hops, we did have to spend... oh man, I think it was probably five or six days of trimming hops because we got them fresh off the vine and had to trim them all by hand. And we would recruit some customers to help us do that too. But... so we got to brew a beer that truly had all local hops from it. And that was a fun beer too, because all of the grain for that beer also all was grown in North Dakota, malted in North Dakota never left the state. So it was a really fun kind of all North Dakota beer to brew. And again, English Pale Ale, so a little less hoppy, a little less bitter. But you definitely get a unique characteristic from the different growing conditions of those hops. And we just kind of had a mixed bag of different varieties of hops that he didn't even really know for sure what he was growing. So we figured we'd throw it in a recipe and see what we could do with it.
Connor Brekke 15:59
It was a pretty good hit to if I recall?
Dylan Schafer 16:02
Yeah, we burned through quite a bit of it. And we did do one rendition of it, where we pulled some into a separate fermenter for secondary fermentation, and added a bunch of mango puree to it. And that one was a big hit as well. After drinking the beer for a little while, we just kind of thought that mango would be a very good complementary flavor in that beer and decided to fruit a portion of the batch and both ways it went over quite well.
Connor Brekke 16:30
Community at its best there. Got a group made beer, and a group to enjoy the beer with.
Dylan Schafer 16:36
Absolutely. And the local doctor got a few free pints out of the deal too.
Connor Brekke 16:41
Of course. Why not?
Dylan Schafer 16:43
And kind of speaking of, Connor, you touched on the idea of having different hop varietals and acquiring them from different locations. And we, we do see, especially in the American hop scene right now, that there has become just this huge variety of different flavor potential out there, depending on where the hop is grown, and what particular strain was grown. So in the Hop Doctor, we used kind of a mixed bag of hops that we didn't even know what the strain was. So we weren't 100% sure what the flavor profile of that beer was, or even how bitter it would be because we didn't know it's alpha acid content, or any of its essential oil content. And that, you know, you definitely get a unique character, even if they were traditional Cascade hops grown here in North Dakota, versus Cascade hops grown out west in the Yakima Valley, you'd get a just very, very different flavor profile out of that hop.
Connor Brekke 17:41
And that's kind of exciting too, because you make a small test batch, and then you go, "Oh, I could do this with it." Or.... I could... instead of having like, a set, "okay, I'm going to do this." Now you can get kind of creative with whatever the flavor profile is, whenever it pops out, you're like, "Oh,cool."
Connor Brekke 17:58
Absolutely. And even when we brewed, so our Guava Queen, our guava IPA, when we brewed that we specifically ordered hops, we knew we wanted to brew a guava beer. And we had a customer recommend that it was a guava IPA. And so we started digging around and kind of shopping for the right hop varietal that would give all the necessary essential oils to kind of give us a tropical fruity characteristic, with just a hint of kind of spicy floral ness to balance out the sweetness of it. So I mean, when it comes to picking hops, you can kind of really shop around and just read from the different farms and from the different suppliers, the specs on the hops, and you can really just pick and choose and craft some really unique characteristics out of a different hop varietals.
Connor Brekke 18:47
There's a big hop world out there, and guys are doing a good job of exploring it.
Dylan Schafer 18:52
There is, and we've dealt primarily with US grown hops, and US varietals of hops. I have imported some German hops and some of your European hops in general. And those European hops even have a very, very different character than your American ones, you know? Typically, and this is again, very broadly speaking, a lot of your American hops you're going to see more of the piney characteristics, the fruity characteristics, citrus, tropical fruit, things like that. And then when you start dabbling into your European hops, you're definitely going to find a little bit more of kind of the spiciness, the herbal characters, the floral characters and you know some of that is growing conditions but some of it is also just different varietals that have always been growing in those areas.
Connor Brekke 19:45
So going back on hop varieties and growing locations, I couldn't help but think that "these things can grow in North Dakota?" That must mean they are pretty hardy and they can grow almost anywhere?
Dylan Schafer 19:56
And that is very true. They are a ridiculously resilient plant. You know, they can be prone to some pests and things like that. But for the most part, they're super hardy and super resilient. And you can find them growing in just about any region of this country and any other country to be honest with you. The matter of fact, hops are native and just about anywhere you can think of in the world. I mean, just right here in North Dakota, there's a couple local lakes that just have wild hops growing all around the lake. And I'm willing to bet that wherever you live, you can probably go out somewhere and find wild hops growing out there in nature somewhere, because they are just kind of... they're basically weed to be honest with you. And they're just happened to be a weed that we really like some of their characteristics.
Connor Brekke 20:48
Yep, another green plant that we seem to like.
Dylan Schafer 20:51
Funny how that works.
Connor Brekke 20:53
Alright, guys, I "hop" you learned something today.... I won't do that again. I promise. So yeah, we did a little IPA hop special. guys keep plugging away with the hops. It's been a great adventure here.
Dylan Schafer 21:09
And again, I just want to remind everyone, don't be afraid of the hops. Give them a whirl, you won't be disappointed.
Connor Brekke 21:16
Exactly. You'll turn out like me.
Dylan Schafer 21:20
That can't be a bad thing.
Connor Brekke 21:22
...No comment. But seriously, keep an open mind. Keep trying new beers. Keep it local if you can. So come on down for a pint or two or three, and I will see you next time. Cheers.
Connor Brekke 21:38
The Ombibulous is made possible with Castos, giving creators the tools to connect with their audience and community. The music is courteous of Pond5. With over 25 million royalty free stock videos, music, photos, and sound effects, there's something for every creator. Today's content was recorded here at Dialectic Brewing Company in Mandan, North Dakota. I would like to thank Dylan Schafer for the use of his facility and time to create this episode. And of course, a big thanks to all of our listeners, thank you for all of your support. Until next time, cheers.