How To Select The Variety Of Hops For Your Home Brewed Beer

Making your own beer at home can be an amazing experience. It offers you the opportunity to create a brew to your own particular tastes when home beer brewing. The hobby of home beer brewing can also offer you the opportunity of making a beer you can't get very easily in your locality. Home beer brewing also allows you to play with the ingredients that will determine the final taste of the end result. But sometimes selecting those ingredients can be difficult. For example, there are dozens of hops varieties that you can choose from. The article that follows will discuss how to select the right hops for the particular home brewed beer you want to make at home.

There are actually so many different kinds of hops that it actually can be confusing at first. There are different varieties that are grown in North America, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand that have different properties. And often these varieties of hops can be used in the brewing of one or more beers. For example, the hops variety known as Brewer's Gold can be used for an English ale, Hallertauer (from the U.S.) can be used for brewing Lager, pilsner, bock or wheat beer, Challenger (from the U.K.) can be used when you are wanting to brew an English-style ale, a porter, a stout, ESB or bitter while German Hersbrucker is a great hops for brewing lager, pilsner, bock or wheat beer.

There are a number of things you need to look for when selecting your hops. You must know the alpha acid "rating" for a particular hops you are looking at using. This rating tells you how much of the weight of the hop consists of alpha acids. Hops that consist of a higher alpha acid content will add more bitterness than a low alpha hop when using the same quantity of that hop.

For example, Ultra has an Alpha Acid % of 2% to 4.1%, Target (U.K.) offers an Alpha Acid content of 9.5% to 12.5% while Zeus gives you an Alpha Acid content of 13% to 17%. WGV (Whitbread Golding Variety) from the U.K. is 5% to 7% while Polish Lublin ranges from 3% to 4.5%. Hops contribute a bitterness that will balance the sweetness of the malt in your beer recipe so you need to choose wisely.

In addition, each variety of hops will add a specific flavor or aroma to your beer. For example, Fuggles is said to have a grassy and somewhat cheesy flavor to it, Bullion is described as having an intense blackcurrant aroma while Chinook is described as having a mild to a medium-heavy, spicy, piney, and grapefruity flavoring. As you can easily see, each of these has a particular characteristic to add to your beer.

While all this might seem to be confusing or daunting at first, the good thing is that you will find charts available that will describe the alpha acid rating as well as the flavor or aroma of each variety of hops. You can also find charts that will tell you exactly which hops are best for which variety of beers. You can visit your local home beer making store or you can look on the World Wide Web for charts and information to help you choose a variety of hops for your next batch. Having this information available will also help you to select and even allows you to experiment with a variety of hops that will decrease or increase the bitterness you prefer. Or you can experiment with the flavoring that you would like to have in your next beer.

There are some home beer brewing aficionados who prefer to try and grow their own hops rather than order from hop suppliers or your local home beer brewing hobby store. If you decide to try to grow your own keep in mind that it may take you from 2 to 3 years to harvest the full crop. But this can definitely be another way of having full control over another ingredient in your home home made beer.

As you can see, hops are a major ingredient in beer and they provide much of the flavor and spice that defines many different types of beer. Don't be afraid to experiment and to try a different variety of hops to add to the final flavor of your home brewed beer. Take a new variety of hops for a spin and create a homemade beer that will take your family and friends (if not the world) by storm!
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