I just bought some hops rhyzomes from a local farmer (Salt Lake Valley, UT). I bought a couple of Cascade and a wild hop he found and has been reproducing. He’s named it Harvard, after the street he found it on. He says he thinks is Centennial, but doesn’t know for sure, is there a good way to find out more about it? Should I just experiment with it or is there a lab I can send it to? I’m excited to brew with it this fall. He said it grows REALLY good here under natural conditions (no watering or soil treatment), which seems so odd to me considering I live in a desert. Anyway, thanks for your input as always.
Growing and brewing with it will be the easiest test. Centennial is not too hard to distinguish. As it starts to grow you can also compare pictures of the plants. Some hop plants have distinguishing features.
Since hops are very terrior dependent, even if it was Centennial it might have none of the character usually associated with Centennial. I just returned from New Zealand, where they grow Cascade from rhizomes from the US. It’s so entirely different from our Cascade that they had to give it another name. You would never recognize it as Cascade.
To reinforce that, during the hop shortage of 2008, Argentinian Cascades were found to be available and breweries and homebrewers found them. The general comment was that they were not like Cascade hops from the PNW, but were more herbal and noble hop like.
I haven’t tried them personally, but I understand they are much more herbal than the same rhizomes grown here. They call them “Tehiki” (sp.?) so as not to mislead people.
That would be Hallertau Cascade, which is grown and used in the German Craft PA and IPAs. The first link has a nice article by Stan Hieronymus, showing how Cascade changes as to location.
Mandarina Bavaria was developed by the Hüll Hop Research Institute, Cascade was the Mother. More information in the second link.