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Palate chat?

Discuss beer or anything else that comes to mind in here.

Moderators: Craig, Cass

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Tapsucker
Seasoned Drinker
Posts: 1909
Joined: Fri Apr 28, 2006 6:21 pm
Location: Toronto

Palate chat?

Post by Tapsucker »

Get ready to drink from a firehose, because here is my post. ;-)

I was just inspired to think about this as a proposed forum thread. (I’ll get to the inspiration in a bit).

As a homebrewer, I try new ingredients, as most do. But even beer lovers who don’t brew themselves get exposed to new things. Duh!

What I am getting at is, it would be fun to share how we experience these specific new ingredients with our own personal palates. I’m sure members here range from casual to cicerones and the idea I have is not to stratify the ‘expert’ and the ‘casual’, but to bring together have some fun and hopefully insightful conversation amongst all.

So here is my inspiration/example.

Last year I bought, but did not immediately get around to using a new hop variety called Sasquatch. It’s a Canadian west coast newcomer with a little bit of online pedigree to read about, but I had never had a beer using it, so I had to try for myself. I’ve used it the way I often try new varieties; as a substitute for the existing hops in one of my ESB recipes. It tends to be a good way to explore the hop character without too much other stuff going on, but still enough malt to create a conversation. What I find interesting about the results in this case is the experience varies pretty wildly with things like food pairing. While all beer does this, it’s really notable here. For instance, anything with dairy fat, like cheese or a cream sauce, seems to bring out a black tea note. I know that makes people think tannin and somehow bad, but it’s really nice. Spicy pairings seem to cause a bit of a whiskey note with a tequila finish. WTF? Not pairing is possibly best described as Amarillo like. I do notice one batch that I experimented at higher alcohol complimented the character even more, which is something I have experienced with Amarillo.

So my question here is. Anybody else had tasting experiences with this hop? What have they been? Maybe you brewed with it, or you are just aware of it being used in something your tried. Thoughts?

And to the moderators, if there is interest, maybe this could evolve into its own kind of discussion group. I mean, it is also kind of random, so it might not matter, or fall under beer reviews, but I was thinking it could be more ingredient or technique related.
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