I have a friend who is delving into hops farming.First year plants. One of his varieties is Comet hops. He brings me a bag the other day of fresh picked hops so I decide to dry them and vacuum seal for a brew day down the road. Sure I would have liked to use them wet but hey…
I can’t help but get an onion/garlic but more onion aroma from these hops as they are drying. Not in a bad way at all, I love both the taste and aroma of onions and garlic in my food. I have zero experience with hops smelling like them.
Give me your take on this hops variety, its uses style wise, likes/dislikes for it and any other opinions!?!
Onion and garlic is from harvesting too late. Tell your friend that. There are more than a few references online that support that. Comet is a nice variety otherwise.
Just what I was thinking. It’s a fine line between harvesting before maximum oils and alpha are developed and when it’s all gone south. The cones should be showing just a bit of brown on the tips of the bracts and the strobiles should be snapping when bent. All nice and green is under ripe and a waste, and then it’s too late and its garlic beer. I do not envy those trying to make a go of commercial hop growing, especially in this region. If the weather doesn’t let you harvest on the right day…
As for the variety, as I recall it was released as what passed for a high alpha hop in the 70s, a potential replacement for Cluster, but never caught on and was quickly abandoned, as it was too, well, what today we’d call “dank.” It has been revived, and I know a couple of guys around here have made award winning, single hop, IPAs with it.
One thing I learned at YCH Hop and Brew School was to take a cone, place it top to bottom between your thumb and index finger and squeeze. You are seeing if the Strig snaps as you squeeze, that means it is ready. The guy telling this said he had recently learned that, and he had been around hops his entire life. It was Jason Perault.
You really do learn something every day I guess. If you’re doing life right! And on that note, thanks for jogging my memory on hop anatomy. The word I was looking for was strig, not strobile. Now what the heck is a strobile, that word came from somewhere in my head… ah at least I had the first two letters.
[EDIT actually had the first 3 letters didn’t I? Can’t count today either. Blame allergies. ]
And I found out what a strobile is. It’s the whole thing. “[A] reproductive structure characterized by overlapping scalelike parts, as a pine cone or the fruit of the hop,” says Dictionary.com; “a spike with persistent overlapping bracts that resembles a cone and is the pistillate inflorescence of the hop,” Merriam Webster. “Pistillate inflorescence,” I like that. Keeps them coming back to the dictionary for more!
Yep. I had it in some, I think last year, don’t recall the variety. But it was one I never had it in before and I recall they were a tad browner than you’d expect, also indicating late harvest. I had bought a whole pound and was bummed. (No, of course they were not from Ted, I should know to just buy from him!)
Actually it is a cluster of 60 or so flowers in the proper sense, hidden under the bracts, if I’m not mistaken. So it really has something in common with a strawberry, which we also easily forget is really a cluster of flowers, emerging from a burr not unlike that of the hop, and resulting in a conical, compound fruit. Plants can be weird.
