We love brewing SMaSH beers to get to know a particular hops’ aroma and flavor. This post showcases our review of a Vic Secret Hops SMaSH beer. Watch this video to get our thoughts and learn more about this variety.

SMaSH Process For This Beer

The SMaSH beer recipe formula is tried, true, and fairly simple. I like to brew a one gallon batches using two pounds of English pale malt and 1 ounce of hops. After mashing the grains in a bag, I boil two gallons of wort to get my one gallon batch.

Lately, I have been varying up my hops schedule, especially with these varieties that are known for their aroma and flavor properties. I don’t add a lot to the beginning of the boil as I feel like that has been a mistake in the past. When I add a good bittering charge (0.25 ounces at 60 minutes to go in my gallon batch) with these aroma hops, I believe it throws off our evaluation. Many flavors that wouldn’t normally present themselves do after a long boil so our descriptors are different from what is posted online.

Anyway, lesson learned and we keep improving. I added just a smidgen of Vic Secret hops to the beginning of the boil and the majority of the pellets I added at the end of the boil and during fermentation.

Now, on to the notes!

Tasting Notes

Mike took a big whiff and he picked up what he called a “big green hop bag” aroma. He described that as the smell you get when you open up a bag of any hops. Then, he said he detected pineapple and green mango aromas with some subtle peach and tangerine notes.

In the flavor, he said it had a lot of tropical fruit flavors up front with some Cascade flavors in the background.

The two descriptors that we didn’t detect were notes of pine and/or passion fruit, but we are not experts in that fruit’s flavor.

Overall, we felt like this hop was like a Galaxy light. It would be a good substitution for that hop variety if you could not find it at your local homebrew shop.

Lastly, Vic Secret can be blended with other hops to make an great NE IPA. Give them a try, won’t you?

Brew on!