If there is anything that these Brew Dudes do well, it’s brewing SMaSH beers. This week, we taste a SMaSH with noble hops:

Instead of brewing one using one of the new varieties from Australia or the Pacific Northwest, Mike brewed one using Tettnang hops.

Mike prepared it in a clean, sanitized, 2-liter soda bottle, topped with a Carb Cap so that he could carbonate it for evaluation purposes. I will tell you that the first whiff off of that beer was not pleasant. It was a little stinky. While I am not sure what cause that odor, it did lift away and then the beer’s true aromas revealed themselves.

Once Mike revealed that the hop he used for the SMaSh beer, we started to smell and taste the beer to pull out the aromas and flavors.

We learned very quickly that the refined characters of the noble were not only hard to pull forward but also hard to describe.

So Can You Tell Me What Tettnang Hops Taste Like?

I can tell you that the beer’s hops tasted “spicy” but not overwhelming so. The Tettnang hops brought a present to the beer that we are all very familiar with. It’s the same hop aroma and taste that we grew up with drinking macro-brewery yellow lagers. The SMaSH beer had a hop profile like any American Light Lager.

Fortunately for you the reader and the viewer, we have decided to run another experiment with Noble hops in SMaSH beers. The plan is to brew a few of them with Noble hops and then compare and contrast them against each other. We feel that if we can all agree that all noble hops have very similar profile and the differences are subtle, then it would be our job to brew beers for comparison purposes to really define the slight difference between these classic hop varieties.

Stay tun for more. We appreciate your time and interest in what we are doing. May you have a great beer day and as always, Brew On!