Waimea SMASH beer!!! John keeps rolling along with grinding out great SMASH beers for us to explore these hops. Waimea hops were part of our online voting poll that didn’t make the early cut.

NO LONGER!!!

Waimea SMASH Beer coming at you! Check it out!

Waimea Hops come from New Zealand and are listed as dual purpose hops. Primarily the breeding focused on bittering properties but, there are some unique aroma/flavor properties as well.

My first impressions on this hop was aromas of white grape and subtle blueberry floral qualities. Not very strong aroma presence for sure. Flavor was slightly different with tangerine and melon like qualities. Again neither was terribly strong and something that was easy to pin down or identify.

The commercial descriptors were focused on tangelo?!?!? What is a tangelo? Sort of a melon and tangerine mix, I suppose. There are also mention of pine needles and citrus.

An intriguing hop but I think it doesn’t have a distinctive enough character to be a showcase hop in your beer. We think this is a best reserved hop as to be blended into the a hop profile that fills in the gaps between maybe a couple more star player hops. I could see this working well with some Mosaic or Galaxy hops.

Have you brewed with Waimea yet? What’s your thoughts and do they agree with our assessment?
Let us know in the comments.

BREW ON!