Ekuanot® is HBC 366, a high-oil Hop Breeding Company variety released in 2014. Yakima Chief Hops currently groups its aroma as tropical, bubblegum, citrus, stone fruit and woody. That is a more precise starting point than calling it simply “tropical and berry,” and it changes how a replacement should be evaluated.
Ekuanot profile from the current supplier reference
| Field | Ekuanot® HBC 366 reference | Planning note |
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2014 | Use Ekuanot and HBC 366 together in old-recipe notes |
| Aroma groups | Tropical, bubblegum, citrus, stone fruit, woody | Rank the required attributes before comparing candidates |
| Typical alpha acids | 14–16% | Check the value on the actual packet |
| Typical beta acids | 4–5.5% | Reference range, not a certificate for every lot |
| Typical total oil | 2.5–4.5 mL/100 g | High total oil does not define a universal dosing rate |
Yakima Chief's sensory comparison lists Centennial, Chinook, Krush and Simcoe among similar or recommended varieties. Their individual profiles are not identical to Ekuanot's. Use that list to choose experiments, not to state that any one candidate will reproduce all five Ekuanot aroma groups.
Calculate bittering before judging aroma
Suppose an early recipe addition calls for 20 g of an Ekuanot lot marked 15% alpha acids, but the available replacement lot is marked 12%. With hop form, boil time, wort volume and utilisation assumptions held constant:
20 × 15 ÷ 12 = 25 g
This hypothetical arithmetic equalises labelled alpha-acid mass only. It does not establish identical measured IBUs and it does not replace Ekuanot's aroma. Use the hop substitution calculator for your packet values.
Choose the aroma trade-off deliberately
If tropical and citrus are essential, a candidate can be scored on those two dimensions while a loss of bubblegum or woody character is recorded rather than ignored. If the woody or stone-fruit side is central, a different candidate or blend may be more useful. This makes the result a documented recipe decision instead of an unsupported universal ranking.
For a two-variety trial using a hypothetical total aroma mass of 50 g, a 70:30 plan contains 35 g of the lead candidate and 15 g of the supporting candidate. This is mass arithmetic, not a proven sensory ratio or dose recommendation.
Run a coded candidate screen
- Use one base beer and equal trial volumes.
- Compare Ekuanot with no more than two candidates at a time.
- Keep product form, mass per litre, temperature and contact conditions constant.
- Score tropical, bubblegum, citrus, stone fruit and woody independently.
- Record overall preference only after the descriptive notes.
This protocol is not a BrewMyBeer tasting result. Save the candidate lots, arithmetic and coded notes in Beer Lab. For other varieties and the limits of alpha-based replacement, read the hop replacement guide.
Sources and limits
BrewMyBeer has not independently tested these varieties or the reader's lot. Supplier sensory descriptions are useful hypotheses, not guarantees that every process or assessor will produce the same words.
Learning check: what does the 25 g result in the worked example establish?
Only equal labelled alpha-acid mass under the stated fixed assumptions. It does not establish the same aroma, measured IBU or finished-beer preference.