Thursday 22 November 2012

I am a Prolific drinker

"So what's new?" I hear you say. As it happens the hop is new, though when I say new I mean old.

Dave at work has brewed up home brew batch using the Prolific hop variety. Thanks to his seasonal work picking hops he was given a small sample of hops from the two Prolific plants grown on the farm he works at.

Dating from 1852, it was once a widely grown varitey, though John Percival wasn't keen on it, describing it as "... of poor quality, coarse in petal, pointed square in section and poor in flavour." As modern tastes have changed we were very interested to see whether or not the flavour would be more appealing nowadays.

As it happened there wasn't actually much flavour. There was a noticeable hop resin aroma to the beer, but the taste was just a very clean bitterness. It made the beer drinkable but also rather unexciting. I don't think the Prolific hop will be making a comeback.

2 comments:

  1. Ah the name of the hop is prolific. See what you did there.

    Now you need to find a hop called "Pete Browns Bum Gravy"

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  2. I can see it now, people raving about the great taste of Pete Browns Bum Gravy. Maybe it's time you got gardening? Every hop grown from seed is a new variety and waiting to be named.

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