I had the exciting opportunity a few weeks ago to sit down with a brewer and talk about one of the many aspects of beer making—hops.
If you spend enough time around fans of microbrewing, you will probably hear people say, “I love hoppy beer,” enough times for you to lose count. But have you ever taken a moment to consider what that actually means or why hops are so important to the brewing process?
At places like Naughty Oak Brewing Company in Orcutt, hops are treated like fine works of art. They’re studied incessantly and examined down to the last detail. Thanks to Naughty Oak’s Stephen Kitts, who holds monthly Brewer’s Talks at the venue, I had a chance to get up close and familiar with some really unique hops and some of the brewer’s newest beers.
Hops are a flower used in beer making, primarily to balance the sweetness from the malt in beer. Before brewers of the olden days discovered hops, they often used other substitutes, such as spruce. Gruit beers were made by using herbal combinations to cut down on the sweetness (and are still made today in some places).
“They tried to find things that were bitter or astringent to try to cut through some of the sweetness,” Kitts said. “That’s the reason why hops came into the picture in the first place. Fast-forward thousands of years today and they’re used for a whole other set of reasons.”
Hops are used for three components in beer making: bitterness, flavor, and aroma. Typically, brewers combine multiple hops to highlight each component. Bitterness is key when aiming to produce a beer with a higher alcohol content. Grains such as malt and barley are incredibly sweet, so unless you want beer that tastes like Pixy Stix, you have to find something that offers a balance. If you want to make a beer that’s higher in alcohol content, you have to use more barley per volume of liquid, Kitts explained. That requires adjusting the amount of hops you’re using.
“So we actually scale some things and use more intense hops sometimes to cut through the sweetness,” Kitts said. “For our lower gravity beers—lower alcohol beers, pale ales and things like that—if we put in 10 ounces of a hop, it’s a nice balance of a beer. If you take that same recipe and you amplify it … to go up 3 or 4 alcohol percent, that’s about double the amount of sugar that you’re adding with barley, so it adds that much more intense sweetness to it.”
Sometimes you may have to add as much as three times the amount of hops to counteract the sweetness from adding barley to get that higher alcohol content, he said.
Let’s not forget about aroma and flavor.
“Hops don’t really add a lot to the visual,” Kitts said. “Hops can sometimes leave a greenish tinge to a beer if they use a lot hops, but other than that, most of the time you don’t really get any visual differences. But you will smell it.”
Take for example, Hallertau blanc, a hops that isn’t used very frequently but is featured in a single-hop beer Naughty Oak recently introduced called Lupine Blanc.
“We used a pale, relatively basic malt profile to kind of let it stand out of the way,” Kitts said. “With a single hop, you can use it for a bittering hop, a flavoring hop, and an aromatic hop, so you get a sense of what that hop can do across the board.”
The aromatic components in the Lupine Blanc include white wine, lemongrass, and green peppers.
Hops are normally added toward the end of the brewing process—right at the end of the life of the beer, while it’s still in the tank.
“When it’s done fermenting and bubbling, you’re basically putting these hops, these flowers, in to get the oils that are inside of the hop to be in solution,” Kitts said. “So when you carbonate the beer and it is effervescent in your glass, you get an aromatic sense of the oils being driven out a little bit.”
Ever noticed the date codes on your favorite IPA and wondered why they are a lot shorter than lagers? Those dates are important, Kitts explained, especially if you want to enjoy your favorite IPA as it was meant to be.
Hops are volatile. Aromatics will drop off fastest at the beginning, and then the bitterness will do the same, he noted.
“The hop component changes over time while the malt stays the same,” he said. “Which is, if you buy a beer and save it for a while, it might be sweeter than you initially remember it. That’s why lager beers don’t change for years and years, because they are based on malts alone.”
Once you start to get into the nuances of combining hops for their different components, the effect can be quite eye-opening. Beers like Naughty Oak’s Resilience IPA have a hop aroma of grapefruit and pine, with a citrus flavor and a sharp, clean bitterness. The Able IPA tastes of citrus, mango, and pineapple, with a tropical aroma and a very drying bitterness.
And brewers are nowhere near the end of testing their limits when it comes to experimenting with hops and their impact on your favorite beers.
“The universe is still expanding,” Kitts said. “There are so many combinations and varieties … . They are going crazy with it.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose also has the aroma of white wine. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
• I don’t know why the crispy grilled shrimp (pictured right) from Far Western Tavern in Orcutt are so good, but they really are! Served on a bed of greens with a sweet dipping sauce, they’re tangy and not too spicy and make for a great snack with drinks at the bar. Go check them out at 300 E. Clark Ave., Orcutt.
• Sad to see things change. Lompoc Valley Seed and Milling has closed its doors. The company opened in the ’50s and was one of the last remaining agricultural food businesses still operating in town. Que será será.
• Blosser Urban Gardens’ (BUG) food stand is now open Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. They offer a selection of organic and locally sourced produce as well as homemade canned goods and preserves. Also, the company offers produce box delivery services weekly or biweekly in three different packages. Visit their stand at 915 South Blosser, Santa Maria.
• Los Alamos’ Plenty on Bell is doing some amazing things with avocado toast. Try their version on multigrain bread with poached eggs, avocados, pickled red onions, and hot sauce at 508 Bell St., Los Alamos.
• Stefono’s Sapori d’Italia is now open in Santa Maria (pictured left), offering everything from pizza slices to Italian beef to wildly themed hot dogs (my favorite names are the John Gotti Dog and the Victoria Vegan Italiano.) Find them at 2340 Professional Parkway.
• Have you tried the crunchy sweet-chili bowl with chicken or shrimp at Chow-Ya? It’s crispy fried chicken or shrimp with a punch of heat balanced by a smooth tangy sweetness at the finish. It’s a filling meal fit for your workday lunch break at 713 E. Ocean Ave., Lompoc.
This article appears in Mar 7-14, 2019.
