Brew Dudes

With so many new hop varieties out there to try these days, it’s hard to pick a place to start. This week we start a new short series on three of the newer hop varieties that have made us curious over the last couple years. The first in this series is Mosaic Hops!

Let’s set the stage: To evaluate these hops, we went with a simple BIAB SMASH format using American 2 row as the base malt and each hop spread across the boil to hopefully get a sense of its bittering, flavor, and aroma properties. The hopping schedule has each addition measured to be a quarter ounce at a time. The first addition is added at 60 minute, the second is added at 10 minutes, followed by an addition added at flameout. The last addition is added for three days of dry hopping after fermentation.

Check out our original MOSAIC HOPS Profile.

So how did Mosaic Hops perform?

First off, the aroma is certainly grapefruit pith like, piney, hop resin, and maybe a touch of dark stone fruit.

Pine and classic grapefruit dominate any subtleties in there. The bitterness is certainly dank. It’s resinous. It sticks on the palate for a considerable time.

It has an aggressive bitterness. The flavor is more citrus, still pith like from a citrus rind and a definite pine like finish. There is a subtle fruit finish in it but is overwhelmed by the pine and citrus dankness.

The popular descriptor for this hop is piney, citrus, tropical fruit and mango. Interestingly many describe it as blueberry.

Our impression varies slightly. We get no blueberry from this though there is a fruity quality that could be described as tropical. But it’s the pine and resiny citrus that drive the profile. Probably related to the Simcoe part of the cross with Nugget hops where this new cultivar came from.

There you have it. Certainly a hop that has potential as a resin booster in your bittering charge. Perhaps with some sweeter malts and blended with some fruitier hops you might magnify the tropical fruit quality quite a bit.

You just have to experiment, but hopefully this video taste test helps you fill in your expectations before buying some Mosaic for your next pale ale or IPA.

Tell us about your Mosaic experiences in the comments or on YouTube.

Brew On.

It’s 2015 and it’s time for new beginnings. I chose to start this years video roll with my first mead. I brewed this up a couple months ago. It’s been aging since then. Now it’s free to run wild!!!

This recipe was nothing more than 6 pounds of orange blossom honey in a total volume of two gallons. I heated the water to 80F to help get things mixed. I added one package of Lavin D47 along with a little yeast nutrient.

Three weeks in primary at 68F then I transferred it into a second fermentor where it sat for two months aging and clearing up. It’s gotten considerably cooler since then. Much of the aging occurred in the mid-50s.

For my first mead I think it came out OK. As we tasted it it seemed like the flavor improved as it “breathed”. Johns opinion was that small meads like this do tend to need a little time to evolve. It certainly improved as it warmed up. Maybe some more time in the bottle will change it some more.

In the end the mead is less important that the new year. Here at Brew-Dudes we are ramping up for a new year of videos and blog content. As always we love your comments and we are always open to suggestions for new content.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for sticking with us.
Here’s to good brewing for us all in 2015!

Mike and John

Here is a quick video to close out the year. This was our second straight year of publishing one video a week. That’s 52 videos this year with just over 25,000 views on the ole YouTube. This week’s final offering is a montage of sorts with a few clips from some of our most watched videos.

Thanks for sticking with us and thanks for watching.

We hope to bring more content and more videos in 2015.

As always let us know if there is something you want us to cover or something you want to see.

Cheers.

Every year since John has been growing hops he looks for new ways to use them. His offering this year is a Kellerbier. According to the 2014 BJCP guidelines, Kellerbier is an amber hoppy lager of German origins.

He brewed it. We drank it.

The aroma in this brew has a great candied orange peel thing going for it. There was a subtle malt character underneath it, but it was predominantly a hoppy, fruit quality.

There was a large amount of hops used in this beer as compared to most five gallon recipes. All told, nearly a pound of hops was used during the making of this beer, from the kettle to dry hopping in the carboy.

John used the Mexican Lager strain on this one. A unique strain for sure with a German influenced Kellerbier. It seems to work here. We spent most of the time debating this subtle phenolic quality that was super well balanced in the total presentation. It could have been yeast derived – we are not totally familiar with the Mexican Lager strain so who knows.

I suspect however that the phenolic quality was hop derived. I did a SMaSH beer not long ago that used only Magnum hops. Tasted by itself, there was a subtle mint-like note to it. I think that its totally possible that the homegrown version may be a little phenolic. Added to the other hops in the mix and it seems likely that my palate was simply interpreting it as a phenol.

Regardless, it was a great use of home grown hops and a great time to use a new yeast strain. Next year, we hope to time things a little better and try a wet hop brew on harvest day. Should be fun.

If you would like to see the recipe for this harvest lager, check out this post.

Cheers. Happy Holidays. BREW ON!