Water, Hops, Yeast, and Barley (Part III): Hops

I started this discussion a while back.  You can read Barley (Part I) and Water (Part II) to catch up if you missed it.  As I began to think about hops, I quickly realized there was a lot of ground to cover–from cultivation to varieties, aroma to bittering, and to brewing techniques and how styles use them. In my home brewing adventures thus far, I’ve come across two references that I often refer to when needing information on hop varieties and brewing techniques, and I figured instead of trying to cover the subject myself, I’ll just let the experts tell you.

First up.  The Hop Union.

From Website: Hopunion LLC is owned by six hop growing families. The growers involved operate hop farms in both Oregon and Washington. Ralph Olson also holds an ownership interest in the company and serves as the General Manager. We thrive on our extensive tradition of growing high quality, specialty hops for the craft brewing industry. In 2006, Hopunion formed a strategic partnership with Yakima Chief Inc’s Craft Brewing Division. The combination of these two companies have strengthened our ability to provide a greater selection of hop varieties, improve efficiencies in pellet plant production and enhance our ability to produce larger volumes of consistently higher quality hop products

Hopunion provides a detailed guide for most of the hop varieties available today:  Check it out.

Next up.  Nathan Smith.

Nathan Smith is a BJCP certified judge that often is a guest on The Brewning Network (Sunday Session, Can U Brew It).  He has a wealth of experience in the hops category, and I think he covers a lot of ground that would be useless for me to try to regurgitate across the internets.  So head over to destroy.net to read the following excellent papers: