Beer Brewing

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.

Nectaron is the New Zealand hop variety that changed how I think about tropical fruit hops. I first tried it in a hazy pale ale recipe from a New Zealand craft brewery and the mango and peach character was cleaner …

Talus is a Yakima Chief Hops variety that landed in my brewing rotation after I read that it was bred specifically for distinctive pink grapefruit and floral character — a step away from the generic “citrus and tropical” descriptors that …

Eclipse is a hop I came across while researching Washington State varieties — it’s a Yakima Chief Hops proprietary variety with mandarin orange as the primary character descriptor, and that turns out to be accurate.

Vista is a hop variety I started recommending to homebrewers on a budget who want tropical character without paying Citra or Galaxy prices.