We Love Hops / Hops A-Z

This is a bit of a lazy Sunday type of blog post - as indeed was the last one on Friday - but there are a couple of web-sites that may have passed you by that deserve a wider audience.

If you are anything like me, you will have noticed over the last couple of years the increasing importance of hops in beer. As the golden style of beer has become more popular, so has the more adventurous use of hops, both British and International, in those beers giving more distinct aromas and flavours and high, sometimes huge, bitterness.

Much of brewing remains a dark art to an enthusiastic consumer such as I and there is little by way of sophisticated information to educate one in the science of the hop. A couple of blogs though have recently provided a worthy public service about hop types and I commend them to your attention :

At the Thornbridge Brewer's Blog, Kelly Ryan elaborates upon the wide range of hops that are currently available from their hop merchants Charles Faram here.

and Simon Johnson aka Reluctant Scooper has spent the last month or two researching the hop and most of his blog postings recently have been in the series : Hops A-Z. Check it out here.

I know I like hoppy beers, perhaps now I am on my way to knowing more about why I like them so much.