Welcome to the website created to support the upcoming book, “For the Love of Hops” (subtitle to be determined).
My name is Stan Hieronymus and I’ll be the author. Right now I’m in collecting mode, gathering information you tell me you’d like to find in the book, seeking answers to your questions, investigating what I figure needs exploring, and listening to stories because I think stories are at the center of understanding why and how people do things.
Later — and it will be later because the book won’t be published until September of 2012 — the focus will shift. The site will preview what is in the book, even answering some of your questions before pages roll off the presses.
I’m interested first in your questions, but I hope occasional conversations break out as well. I’ve set up three basic categories, for commercial brewers, for homebrewers and for everybody else. Don’t sweat where you post an idea or question. You’ll notice the introductions are all the same, the categories created only to facilitate conversation.
This book is one in what will be a series from Brewers Publications focusing on beer ingredients. The first, “Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation,” is available now. Others will feature water and malt.
Several years ago I wrote a story for All About Beer magazine headlined “For the Love of Hops: Birth of a Beer Style,” examining the then emerging style called Double (or Imperial) IPA. Don’t let that make you think this will be a book for hopheads only (otherwise it would be called, “Brew Like a Hophead”). A separate book will focus on India Pale Ale (and various stronger spin offs). Mitch Steele and Steve Wagner of Stone Brewing are hard at work on that one.
In general, “For the Love of Hops” will explore culture and agriculture; history and the future; chemistry and what’s in the glass; aroma and flavor; process and philosophy; just about anything you’d expect to find in the ultimate guide to Humulus lupulus. There will be science, but if we all hold hands tightly I think we can understand it together.
As the photo at the top illustrates it’s not always easy being a hop . . . but there’s a lot of love.
(The photo was taken during the 2008 Poperinge Hop Festival, held in the Belgian town of the same name every three years. The town literally shuts down during the parade, with children dressing up as hop cones, marching in the parade and riding on floats. Now that’s hop culture.)
If this book is anything like Brewing in Wheat, I’m ready to pre-order right now! Looking forward to it.
Stan make sure you include a section on “Hop cloning” (Using hop cuttings ) which is just starting to become popular with small hop growers and what many big hop farmers are doing to establish new hop yards
I’m looking forward to this book and very much enjoyed Brew Like a Monk and Brewing with Wheat! There is so much that would be interesting to learn about hops. I’m especially interestied in the historical and cultural info, development of the different hop growing regions and varieties. How the “American” breeds campare and contrast with the continental varieties.
The history of hops would be good (historic usage and varieties). Growing hops in certain regions is quite difficult, and there isn’t much information available about which hops grow best where. The chemistry of hop utilization (1st wort, dry hop, early addition, late addition) would also be good. I’m interested in the utilization of hops and impacts on secondary items (like head retention).
Would love to see information from the ongoing hop maturity study (they had a panel at the CBC this year, John Mallet’s a good contact) – they had some really fantastic information from a chemical level and really fantastic stuff concerning how flavor changes with hop maturity.
I’d also like to see an in-depth discussion about how/why different hop usages work (or don’t – or what differences they produce) including mashing hops, first-wort hopping, hopbacks, etc.
And maybe some information about hop blends – either custom built by brewers (what works, what doesn’t, what flavors), or new packaged ones like we’re starting to see from HopUnion in Falconer’s Flight.
Utilization.
I brew a number of my beers with significant late hop additions (4-6 oz in the last 15 minutes of the boil for a 5 gallon batch is average for my hoppy beers) and I have grown extremely skeptical of the standard IBU calculations. I am certain that even flameout or whirlpool hop additions contribute bitterness to beer, yet all three of the common formulae indicate 0 IBUs. As a result I have relied on years of trial and error to develop balanced recipes that have the late-hop character I’m looking for, without blowing the doors off the IBUs.
How about some coverage of the pre-Prohibition hop growth and varieties in the US. With the amount of people trying to look back and recreate historic beer styles, I think there would be a lot of interest in such information besides use Cluster or old English hop varieties.
Focusing on the brewing perspective, Traditional pairings, combos in specific styles, even in specific well known beers. Eg snpa for cascade.
Characteristics of different hops as bittering, flavour, aroma and dry hopping.
And on a more general one how about a hop lineage / family tree type diagram. Showing how modern types evolved.