Beer Brewing

Jester is a UK hop variety I started using after reading that it had been bred specifically to bring American-style grapefruit hop character into the British market using UK-grown hops.

Brewer’s Gold is one of those classic English hop varieties that has largely fallen out of fashion but deserves more attention than it gets from modern homebrewers.

Glacier is one of those American hop varieties I keep coming back to for English-style ales and session beers where I want hop presence without aggression.

Palisade is a Washington State hop variety that I’ve used primarily in American amber ales and English-style pale ales where I wanted something approachable — floral, earthy, slightly fruity without the sharp citrus edge of Cascade or Centennial.

Santiam is an Oregon-bred hop variety I first encountered in a homebrew shop that carried a Pacific Northwest hop selection alongside the usual Cascade and Willamette.

Olicana is a UK hop variety that caught my attention when I was building a recipe for a tropical-influenced British pale ale — I wanted something that felt genuinely British rather than importing American varieties, and Olicana delivered exactly that

Jarrylo is the hop variety that genuinely surprised me the first time I dry hopped with it — the banana and pear character was more pronounced than I expected, distinct enough that my first NEIPA with it tasted almost like …

Belma is one of those hop varieties that polarizes homebrewers — when it works, it delivers genuinely unusual strawberry and melon character that’s hard to find in any other hop; when it doesn’t work, it produces an off-putting generic fruit …

BRU-1 is a hop I first learned about from a brewer friend who described it simply as “pineapple in a bag.

Installing a proper draft tap in a home bar is one of those projects that looks complicated but is actually straightforward once you understand the system.