Didn’t take long to turn around our fresh harvest Wet hop ale. This week we receded to a the dark and shadow laden basement at Jim’s house to taste our efforts with the Harvest ale.

The first thing we get off this beer is that overwhelming citrus aroma. Somewhere between grapefruit and an orange, the aroma was a bit of a surprise based upon the majority of the hops being a more nobel like variety, Mt. Hood.

That same aroma does not hide in the flavor portion of the experience as there is a definite citrus flavor in there too. Although in the flavor we start to get some, of that earthy and spice driven noble character I’d expect from Mt. Hood.

Neither the aroma or the flavor were over the top strong. Albeit the aroma was noticeable and fairly obvious once the bottle was opened and poured. Interestingly, I would not say these wet hops really gave much bitterness. The bittering quality was pretty subdued and almost un noticeable until things warmed up a bit.

We sort of got lucky with Johns choice of Malt. The floor malted Maris Otter saved the day by give the beer a malt forward profile in the absence of enough bitterness. The fruity quality of the hops and fermentation profile worked well with the distinct and strong malt, bread and biscuit that the grist as putting out. (If anything, I think I’ll need to get some of this Maris Otter and make an ESB or something. Fantastic maintenance of that bread malt flavor from post mash to post ferment.)

It was pretty fun to pick hops and see more than 4 lbs of flowers go right into the brew pot. This wet hop harvest ale tasting was a big surprise. The predominant results were so striking that in the video we didn’t even mention something that was certainly on our minds before we started. Will 4 lbs of wet hops give a vegetal flavor. It wasn’t until after we finished shooting that I realized “Hey, there is not ‘green’ flavor to this brew.” I think that a vegetal character from all the fresh wet hops is often a concern. But in this brew there was none of that.

Obviously Hops are a seasonal product. They say you can’t bitter with homegrown hops. Sure you can, you just put them in at 60 minutes and there you go. Its not heresy to assume a mid point for the standard commercial ranges reported for your homegrown hop variety. Its worked several years in a row for John to do that with dried hops.

The lack of bittering this year I think may really be more related to the weird growing in season we had. I know many of us reported smaller produce from our vegetable gardens this year. And Jim said that he was surprised that they harvest was noticeably smaller than last year.

Oh well. Its home brewing. We tried and we learned. I don’t think we’d do much differently brewing with homegrown hops next year either.

Cheers.