Fermentation took off after 12 hours and finished out after about 10 days. Mashing at a lower temperature and fermenting quickly will minimize the Brett character. I’m going to have to figure out where I got my cultures crossed but this is the culture that will be used for these hoppy beers. Time to make my own.ġ ounce of Nugget hops (for bittering) at beginning of boilĢ ounces of Azacca hops 50 minutes (10 minutes before flame out)įermentation was carried out by the addition of the yeast cake from the Nelson saison that was previously saved for future batches. I can see how this won’t be a hop for everyone but it can be used to make a good beer for sure. Not as much fruit as advertised with this hop but a nice palate never-the-less. It was sweet and floral, like a field of flowers. While my wife did not like this beer as much as I did, this was a very hop forward beer. As you can see in the menu, this is definitely the “it” hop this season with two beers on the menu at a local pub that use this hop. The beer that sealed Azacca’s fate with me was Grizacca from Oxbow brewery in Maine. A little surprising but it has helped me crystallized my thinking of this hop. Since then I have seen Azacca hops EVERYWHERE. The description I got from Yakima is below.Ī quick update, I wrote the above paragraphs shortly after this beer was brewed, not really thinking of returning to it or editing at all. This experience is slightly at odds with the description used by hop farms that this variety is coming out of, I am not conflicted about this hop but I have some and it will be used. Which is fine, my expectations from this hop is a mild floral character with possibly some spiciness / pepper to it. Overall a decent beer but not one I would describe as “hoppy” exactly. The beer is sweet with a floral note, not a lot of fruit in the palate like the Hop Ranch from Victory, finish is mildly bitter. Aroma is almost peppery, it is hard to tell if that is the hop or the yeast. Beer is yellow and clear with moderate carbonation and a white head of small and medium bubbles, some lacing, decent retention. A quick beer review, beer served out of a growler into the proper glass. I quickly grabbed a growler of it and drank it the night before brewing this beer…just to see what I was getting myself into. The beer is called “Range Life”…and is a hoppy wheat meant to showcase this hop. Mosaic is such a stellar hop (see Recipe #07) that I fear it might have overshadowed the Azacca in that beer so I sought out an Azacca single hop beer.Ī second commercial example I was able to snag was from the NEW brewery in the Shaw neighborhood of D.C. Ranch IPA is an imperial IPA made with Mosaic and Azacca hops and is “climbing the charts” on beers that matter to a bunch of beer tickers on the internet (see beeradvocate or ratebeer for this particular species of creature….or just hang out with me). Most notably is the Victory Brewing Company beer Ranch IPA. There are a few beers currently being produced using this hop. I want to turn these over quickly so if you are in the DC area and would like a growler of one of these, contact me…I can make that happen.Īzacca hop is the only hop I’ll be using in this experiment that has a name…also commercial examples. I will brew these in batches of two…each beer will get their own post and hopefully I can write a summary post at the end of this experiment with my notes and some bottles I saved to give an overview of the experiment. One of the reasons why I’ve brewed the same beer over and over again is to get this process down to near surgical precision to do this comparison. These are going to all have the same grain bill and brewed as similar as possible. I will be brewing a total of 6 of these hoppy saisons with different experimental hop varieties I picked up from Yakima Valley Hops a little bit ago. I am excited to start this series of beers.
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