I live in Oregon and am an all grain brewer. And of course I use a lot of cascade hops to brew pale ales and IPA's. About 6 months ago my brewing partners and I began brewing some beer that tasted pretty bad. It has a very distinct sour flavor. We figured that we had gotten some kind of contanimation in the fermenter so dumped the yeast and tried again and the flavor is back. We made some stout and it tasted pretty good, but we figured there were so many flavors, they covered up all the funky bitterness we were picking up in our pale ales.
I was down at my local pub tonight and tasted a local commercially produced IPA and guess what. This beer had the same sour flavor, although a bit less powerful. When I told the pub owner that I thought he had a bad keg, he said when he reported the flavor to the brewer, the brewer told him that the flavor was from 2011 cascade hops that had a stronger alpha than normal and that he just hadn't adjusted his recipe.
Doe this make sense to anyone out there? Is my beer bad or is it just an off year for Cascade hopes?
Thanks for the help