We’ve been talking a lot about hops lately on camera. We’ve even talked more about hops and hopping off camera. Over the past several months John has collected a stash of hops from Australia and New Zealand. I think we intended to do some more hop tasting experiments with these, but even for us that’s getting a little boring. Instead we bring you, the Down Under IPA.

This 1.070 starting gravity beer starts its 60 minutes boil with 3/4 of an ounes of Warrior hops. I love using Warrior hops because of the clean bittering. It give a nice base of hop bitterness that you can build on with more characterful hops later in your process. With 10 minutes left in the boil, John added an ounce of Pacific Jade, which is a hop variety that has a distinct earthy spicy and black pepper-like presence. To finish the boil off, at flame-out, John performed a sort of hop burst. He added a blend of 1 oz Australian Topaz hops and 3 oz of New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hops -A 4 oz hop burst. He let this sit for 15-minutes after flame out.

We discuss this in the video as a hop bursting exercise, but to me it seems more like a hop stand really but we can save that debate for discussion when we do a tasting around this beer in several weeks. Regardless, of what we call it, I am hoping for a big fruity citrusy IPA with a clean bitterness. I am very interested in how the black pepper quality of the Pacific Jade comes through. It could be a nice balance not with all the fruity hops.

For yeast, this beer is being fermented with two strains, WLP001 California Ale yeast and Wyeast 1217 the West Coast Ale yeast (aka Pacman from Rogue). No real special strategy here, he just used with two yeasts that are very similar. It turned out to be just a little insurance policy in the viability because the WY1217 may have been hurting from a freezing shipping trip across the country. If the blend works out well though, I’d like to get some slurry from the primary. The Pacman strain is one I’ve wanted to use for a while as it might make a fine cream ale. Although with all that hopping in this beer, maybe I should pass.

Stay tuned for an upcoming tasting video of this one. In the meantime… BREW ON!