This past weekend I participated in the second annual Homebrew Jamboree hosted by Josh Bernstein. The event featured NYC’s best homebrewers serving their wares to a standing room only crowd inside Jimmy’s 43 in Manhattan. I thought this would be a perfect chance to do a single hop beer (again) and get some tasting notes on one of the numerous experimental and newly released hops taking up room in the freezer (which are pissing off my wife). I chose to brew with Azacca (ADHA 483) which has been generating quite a buzz recently.
photo credit: Josh Bernstein
I asked everyone who came to my booth for a sample to give me a descriptor of what they smelled, tasted, imagined and I got some pretty good responses. I definitely was surprised by the reactions from most people and even more surprised by the repeat “customers” I had throughout the event. Both novice and experienced tasters contributed to a gnarly (in a good way) list of positive attributes:
screen shot game is on point
I believe I can safely say that “tropical” would be a good catch-all descriptor for this hop. Goin’ hard in the tropical arena, dropping a triple-double no assists (I had to google that reference for my wife). Super juicy. One of the most interesting things I noted about this hop was its distinct lack of citrus flavor (even though one taster mentioned it), a hallmark of several American hop profiles. I got huge pineapple that reminded me of Simcoe (without the resin/dankness), peach, and some coconut (piña colada). Victory recently paired Azacca with Mosaic in their Hop Ranch Imperial IPA, and I wish I had thought of it first (though I’ve yet to try it). I found this hop so jaw-dropping that after tasting the hydrometer sample of this beer post-fermentation, I switched out some hops from my DIPA recipe I was brewing that day and popped in some Azacca. Tasting notes from that batch coming soon.
“I think a hop looks like a tiny pineapple” -AEBS
