Reviews Archives - Five Blades Brewing

Brew Dudes Vienna Review

April 7, 2016 by Derek Springer 5 Comments

I have been a fan of the Brew Dudes blog, one of the longest running homebrew blogs around, for just about as long as I have been homebrewing. Needless to say, I was stoked when fellow Vienna enthusiast John from Brew Dudes reached out to me on Twitter and asked if I was interested in exchanging Viennas with him for a new Homebrew Swap segment they were doing–I did not realize I was going to be the first! Exciting!

As for my impression of John’s Vienna: it has a great soft bready/toasty malt profile and is very nicely balanced with a moderate bittering with a light floral hop character. Color and clarity is spot on and it is overall a very clean and soft Vienna; very well made indeed! 🍻

I told him I hoped he entered it in a few comps, I predict it will do very well. Hopefully he entered it in NHC too, maybe we will have a showdown in the final round 😉

Read their full post here.

Neomexicanus Hop Review: HBC 438

August 3, 2015 by Derek Springer 2 Comments

Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

Think about all the hottest new hops you know about: Mosaic, Azacca, Hallertau Blanc, Equinox–scores more are bursting onto the scene every year. Did you know that your favorite new hop is one of a small handful of its sisters that started its journey over a decade ago? The path to naming and releasing a hop is a long and highly selective process in which vary few varieties make it past even the first year of cultivation.

Hop Breeding Flow Chart – Credit Jason Perrault

Breeders begin by crossing popular existing varieties that they think will 1) produce interesting flavor characteristics and 2) possess the right agronomic traits (e.g. disease resistance, high yield, good storage, etc) and whittle the plants down year by year until only the fittest and most interesting make it into the market. In the latter stages of the process–years 8-10+–select breweries are given the opportunity to experiment and give feedback to the growers; Russian River Brewing famously rescued Simcoe from the brink and popularized it back when it was still an experimental hop variety. Finally, when the breeders, growers, and brewers all agree the variety is worthwhile the hop is given a name and released to the general market. In the mean time, the variety will unceremoniously be referred to by its codename (e.g. HBC 123, YCR 456, USDA 123456, etc).

HBC 438 (aka Ron Mexico)
debuted at NHC 2015.

Those of us fortunate enough to attend the 2015 National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego this past year were treated to a special debut: a single-hop session IPA made by Russian River Brewing named Ron Mexico, the nickname of HBC 438, the experimental hop variety used to make it. The offspring of a Neomexicanus variety “Chuck’s Mexican” cultivated from the wild by Chuck Zimmermann and an unknown Lupulus father, HBC 438 is a rising superstar amongst the brewers who have had the rare opportunity to use it. Described as “tropical and stone fruit” with notes of “exceptionally unique herbal and mint” and possessing high levels of total oils and alpha acids, HBC 438 has taken an unusual path and jumped from a single hill to becoming commercially available much faster than most other varieties.

The biggest treat of all, however, was for those those in attendance of the seminar titled Brewing With Experimental Hops: A New Hop Variety Just For Homebrewers led by Jason Perrault, Karl Vanevenhoven, and Vinnie Cilurzo: a double whammy of 1) the breaking news that HBC 438 is going to be available to homebrewers exclusively starting this August/September and 2) that everyone in attendance was going to take some home with them! Through some finesse and friend-wrangling I managed to grab a total of five ounces of HBC 438, three of which I decided to dedicate to a single-ish hop review beer and two to blend into a multi-hop beer in the future.

Read on for details and my review.

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Neomexicanus Hop Review: Latir

February 9, 2015 by Derek Springer 8 Comments

Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

When I began the journey of discovery that led me to neomexicanus I had no idea just what a sensation this series would become. My only thought at the time was “I just spent $50 on six ounces of hops, I should write an article or two so I feel justified,” not “I should spend the next few months of my life researching the history and future of neomexicanus.” Unsurprisingly, it appears there are many adventurous homebrewers out there looking to explore the horizons of this new hop variety with as much eagerness as myself. In a cruel irony of fates I was in the same place at the same time as none other than Stan Hieronymus himself, but missed the opportunity to serve him some neomexicanus beer by mere minutes (Stone Escondido is a huge place and the 59th Annual American Hop Convention was having a reception there).

@derekspringer dang, on bus & just read this. Sorry I missed you. And the beer.

— Stan Hieronymus (@StanHieronymus) January 22, 2015

As for the reception to the Chama Pale Ale: it received almost standing ovations at my club and equally positive reviews from the handful of individuals to whom I shipped bottles. Folks were having a hard time believing that there was so much character from only three ounces of hops and were tossing around words like mellon, peach, and (of course) weed to describe the aromas and flavor. Needless to say, it has been a hit; I think there is going to be quite a demand for Chama next fall!

Since I have been on a bit of a lager kick recently (’tis this season) I decided a simple (but delicious!) German Pilsner would be a good showcase for Latir which is described as “spicy, herbal, and flowery.” Before I get into the recipe and hop review let’s take a closer look at the hop details.

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Neomexicanus Hop Review: Chama

January 8, 2015 by Derek Springer 7 Comments

Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

I am a firm believer that there is a certain terroir that should go into the beers you make. The local combinations of water, malt, hops, and yeast created the beer styles we know and love today; true ingenuity comes from working to make the best with what you have. To this end, I am constantly on the lookout for truly local ingredients to use in my beers. This usually means using San Diego tap water, California grown barley, and yeast from White Labs. But where are you, sweet hops? Am I forever doomed to use varieties derived from European lupulus hops?

If you recall from my primer on neomexicanus hops, the genesis of this series occurred at the end of 2014 when I was tipped-off about a monastery in New Mexico that had successfully cultivated and began selling homebrew-sized batches of neomexicanus hops from their website. I was intrigued: here was a a brand-new set of hops that no one has even heard of from a variety that is 100% native to the American Southwest; up until this point, the only reference to neomexicanus I had seen was as a footnote in Stan Hieronymus‘ For the Love of Hops. At $8.33/oz shipped these might be the most expensive hops anyone has ever purchased, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I picked up 3 oz each of Chama (“citrusy, herbal, fruity”) and Latir (“spicy, herbal, flowery”).

As a way to justify the cost I resolved to do a bit of research and share the details, which became this series. Due to travel and the holiday season it took me a longer to actually brew with the hops than I was anticipating, but I am excited to finally share the review of my batch made with Chama hops. Stay tuned in the near future for my review of the Latir hops.

Chama Details

The Holy Hops website does not have the same broad analysis of the composition of Chama that they have for Latir, but they do provide the following. Interesting to note the high levels of beta acids, which are about the highest I recall seeing.

Availability: Holy Hops
Description: Citrusy, herbal, fruity.
Alpha: 7.3%
Beta: 8.2%
HSI: 22.1% (stores decently)

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Neomexicanus Wild Hop IPA Review

December 28, 2014 by Derek Springer 6 Comments

Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

In my last post about neomexicanus hops I noted that Sierra Nevada recently released an IPA made solely from (almost the entire worldwide crop of) neomexicanus titled Harvest Wild Hop IPA: Neomexicanus Varietal as the final release in this year’s Harvest series. Since publishing that post have made it my personal goal to search every bottle shop in San Diego until I found some to try; it took me nearly three weeks, but I finally found my white whale. This blog is usually not a place where I review commercial beers, but since this beer is the closest many folks will come to trying this new variety I am making an exception.

Details

Style: IPA
Description: A few years back, we caught wind of rogue hop heads in the Southwest who began collecting some of the wild hops they found while scrambling down hillsides near their home in New Mexico. These bizarre, multi-headed, native U.S. cones have a flavor like nothing we’ve tasted, and for the first time, we’re showcasing their unusual melon, apricot and citrus aromas and flavors in our beer. Neomexicanus is the literal wild card in our five-bottle Harvest series which features single hop, fresh hop, wet hop, and wild hop beers.
Neomexicanus Variety: While not explicitly stated, the “multi-headed” variety they are referring to is likely Medusa.
Malt: 2-row Pale, Caramel [60?]
IBUs: 55
ABV: 6.5%
Availability: Nationwide in December/January.
Reviews: RateBeer | BeerAdvocate | Untappd