Ok I know this isn’t for everyone but, I had a Dogfishhead Apri hop beer and I actually liked it. Could I have a keg of it and not get sick of it? WHo knows? But, my wife loved it so at least if I get sick of it she won’t. I was thinking of what hops to use in it and figured I would go with citrusy hops like Amarillo and Cascade. What do you guys think?
It seems like a good approach, but the question is will those hops enhance the apricot or get in its way? I’m gonna have to do some visualization with my taste imagination…
Amarillo seems like a good choice based on the write-up on the brewery’s site:
I brewed a APA this past fall with homegrown Cascade and Centennial hops (Cascade as the late addition and dry hop) and while I didn’t add any fruit it had a major apricot aroma which was surprising but really nice. I used US05 yeast, which is usually pretty clean so I don’t think it was the yeast. Anyway, from the way that beer tasted I would think at least the casacde or similar citrusy hops would work well.
I brewed a beer I called Hopricot that was inspired by the Aprihop by Dogfish. It was a pretty standard APA but lighter on hops than normal. I have the recipe at home which I can check later, but I think it had a couple of Amarillo additions. Then in secondary I put it on several pounds of pureed apricots, and dry-hopped it with half an ounce of Amarillo and half an ounce of Palisade. You could probably do all Palisade as has a definite apricot aroma, so it does compliment the apricot. I also added just a dribble of Apricot flavoring at kegging, just to get a little more apricot flavor in there. It came in at about 6% ABV and my friends went nuts on it last summer. A fruit beer that is still kinda hoppy.
I was thinking of taking it light with the hops and just using Amarillo and maybe some cascade. I plan on only using 2oz extract in keg. If it turns out crappy oh well. ;D