Moon Dog Beach Club in Frankston will open its doors on 20 December offering four bars and a beer garden. Moon Dog Beach Club in Frankston will open its doors on 20 December offering four bars and a beer garden. VIC
Moon Dog Beach Club in Frankston will open its doors on 20 December offering four bars and a beer garden. This week I take a quick look at the major hop alpha acids and the role they play in brewing
The former Brews News editor will share insights from more than a decade in beer media at a session on 15 October at Melbourne’s Local Taphouse. 
The awards were dominated by Australian breweries Stone & Wood and Brick Lane Brewing, as well as New Zealand’s Garage Project. 
The Australian trivia company is celebrating its 20th anniversary by partnering with craft brewers for a series of uniquely-flavoured beers. 
After 12 years at the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens, new restrictions has forced the Melbourne arm of GABS to find new digs. 
Pirate Life South Melbourne brings high energy food and beverage experiences to a former mechanics garage. 
The gluten free brewery will be marking its milestone at its Mornington Peninsula venue on December 10.
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The offer comes as the Preston distillery and brewery reopens to the public on Saturday 18 November.
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The Collingwood brewery will host the Smile, Enjoy! Festival on November 12 and a masterclass the day prior.
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The brewery's new East Brunswick venue delivers a new direction from their Victorian High Country roots.
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We take a fabulous rolling beer tour through the most concentrated brewery precinct in Melbourne.
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The group behind multiple Sydney venues are to open a rare beer-focussed bar and bottleshop in Melbourne.
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We've got a couple of double passes to give away as the hop harvest festival returns to Beechworth on March 25.
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The event on International Women's Day will also launch their second collaborative beer with CoConspirators.
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February 18 event to feature over 150 different beers from independent Australian breweries.
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US brewery and their brewmaster Matt Brynildson will join local breweries at the hop harvest event in March.
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Owners look to sell to "realise their vision of creating a true farmhouse brewing operation in rural Victoria".
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May 20-27 calendar will be limited to the best of the best event concepts and will be focussed on local indie beer.
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Brewery's fourth venue is set to open in a South Melbourne former mechanic's garage in mid-2023.
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Five acre Mornington Peninsula property is on the market complete with the brand, brewery, venue and more.
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Heaps Normal, Brick Lane, Bridge Road and Sobah will be flying craft beer's flag at the February 11 event in Melbourne.
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Our batch analysis/QC at Sapwood Cellars is pretty basic. Mostly it's me finding time each weekend to taste a recent release (ideally side-by-side a comparable example from another brewery). I write up tasting notes, include feedback I've gotten from other people, and recipe/process tweaks for next batch.
Part of my routine is to scroll through Untappd to see if I can spot any common threads to the compliments or complaints... but I don't put a huge amount of stock in the average score (see this post). Blind rating by a skilled tasting panel is the gold standard... but having a large/diverse group of beer drinkers give you feedback has value as well! With four years of Untappd scores for our IPAs at my disposal, I thought it would be interesting to see which hops "the beer drinking public" preferred in Sapwood Cellars IPAs and DIPAs!
All IPAs and DIPAs
Pairing Hops
Part of my routine is to scroll through Untappd to see if I can spot any common threads to the compliments or complaints... but I don't put a huge amount of stock in the average score (see this post). Blind rating by a skilled tasting panel is the gold standard... but having a large/diverse group of beer drinkers give you feedback has value as well! With four years of Untappd scores for our IPAs at my disposal, I thought it would be interesting to see which hops "the beer drinking public" preferred in Sapwood Cellars IPAs and DIPAs!
Cheater Hops IPAs
We started this series of IPAs when we opened to showcase our favorite hop varieties. We recently released #22 (Citra-Motueka). All of the batches were 6.5-7.5% ABV, with similar malt bills (American pale barley, chit, wheat, and oats), fermented with an English-leaning yeast, and dry-hopped post-crash at 3-4 lbs/bbl. The table below is the average Untappd score of all batches dry hopped with the variety listed.
The table below include all 65 "big batch" IPAs and DIPAs we've released that don't contain adjuncts (although I did include Phantasm beers). These are diverse in terms of recipe construction, alcohol strength, and dry hopping rate. As a result, the scores are a bit more prone to bias compared to the Cheater Hops data set.
For some batches you'd expect to see a high rating due to pairing two great hops together (e.g., Nelson/Galaxy or Mosaic/Citra). Both varieties score well across all our beers, so no surprise combing them results in a well-rated IPA. More interesting is sorting by the average standard deviation for the hops included. This shows which combinations rated higher than expected given the average scores for those hops across all beers. Snip Snap (Citra/Galaxy), Cheater Hops #22 (Citra/Motueka), Shard Blade (Mosaic/Galaxy), Cheater Hops #13 (Mosaic/Simcoe), and The Dragon (Nelson Sauvin/Mosaic/Hallertau Blanc) were all in the top-10 "overachievers." These hop blends follow different approaches either "leaning into" a particular flavor (fruity, or winey) or balancing fruity with a danker variety.
Rounding out the top-10 are two all-Simcoe (Cheater Hops #12 and Drenched in Green), two all-Mosaic (Fundle Bundle and TDH Trial #1), and an all-Nelson beer (3S4MP). Certainly a sign that these hops can shine alone compared to Citra and Motueka which are highly rated in blends, but haven't exceled in single-hop beers (despite our best efforts). Of course you need a great lot of hops for this to work; the bottom-10 also includes single-hop beers featuring: Simcoe (Cheater Hops #9), Nelson Sauvin (Cheater Hops #11), and Mosaic (Fumble Bumble)!
Two beers with Galaxy and Nelson (Cheater X and X2) each had a standard deviation close to 0. They still rate well, but no better or worse than expected across all beers with Nelson or Galaxy.
Surprisingly three of the bottom four included three varieties Cheater Hops #7 (Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic) Cheater Hops #6 (Motueka, Mosaic, Simcoe) False Peak (Idaho 7, Sultana, Citra). Blending hops can create a generic "hoppiness." These beers may have been missing a distinct "wow" aroma for people to grab onto.
Take Aways
The high/low scores for different batches brewed with the same single hop variety really drives home how unreliable this data likely is. Without multiple batches hopped with the same hop combination, it is impossible to say with certainty if a beer scored well because of aromatic synergy or a delicious lot of hops. Luckily several of the top-rated combinations are beers we have brewed multiple times.
The data does suggest to me that using one or two varieties for the dry hop is the best bet for making the most appealing IPA unless you have something very specific in mind. Often when breweries use a large number of hop varieties in a beer it is to promote consistency (batch-to-batch and year-to-year). It would be interesting to expand the data set to include beers from other breweries. That would produce data that is less specific to our particular brewing approach, hop sourcing, and customers' palates.
Help Provide Data
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