For years I’ve had a tradition of splitting off a good portion of the Irish Red into firkins and dry hopping them heavily with American hops. I always served this as “Yakima Red” since once the hops took hold it really was a completely different beer. Lasty year we started the first Study in Hops by dry hopping each firkin with a different variety of American hop and putting them on tap over a weeks time. This year we’re doing something a little bit different. We wanted you to be able to compare and contrast different varieties of hops, and more of them! So this year we dry hopped 10 small kegs, each with a different variety of hop. We’ll be putting all 10 on tap on Saturday April 2nd at noon. Of course we’ll offer a couple of samplers so you can try all of them and still walk. I think it will be a lot of fun to see exactly what a specific variety of hop tastes like in a beer. You’ve already gotten some of this with single hop beers such as the Rising Sun and Full Nelson, but not all at once. Oh, by the way, credit where credit is due. This project was largely inspired by the since-past Hop Project that Sly Fox used to put on every year. I’m hoping to keep a little bit of that tradition going here in the ‘Shade. The list of hop varieties we’ll be featuring is below my signature. See you on the 2nd!
