[brewsumore]

I was gifted with more than 6 lbs (yes, pounds) of bine (vine) ripened just-picked whole flower summit hops last season.  I gave most of them away but vacuum-sealed around one pound and put them in my freezer.

I have heard that they are an aroma hop, that they can contribute an orange-y flavor, but sometimes suffer from an onion-y flavor contribution.

Can anyone recommend a good use for Summit hops, and maybe some Best Management Practices for getting the good without the bad from them?

Thanks!

[hopfenundmalz]

If you use them for a bittering hop (it is a high AA variety) you will boil off the sulfur compound that causes the onion/garlic that those are known for. You will not get the orange/tangerine that you want.

The sulfur compound becomes higher if the hops are ripened longer. This is done to get higher AA, which increases with ripening also. The use of sulfur based fungicides will cause the onion and garlic to go up also.

You might try and do a small 1 gallon test batch with Summit all the way, and see if you like it or not.

Hope this helps.

[erockrph]

In my experience with a single-hopped Summit APA, the tangerine came across strongly in the aroma with little onion to speak of. The onion/garlic was very potent in the flavor, however, and hasn't aged out to any great extent. That has me thinking that you may be able to get away with dry-hopping with Summit and avoid a lot of the garlic. But I'm not confident enough to risk a batch of beer without further testing. I'll probably do some test batches looking for ways to minimize the onion character at some point, since the tangerine aroma is really worth it if you can isolate that.

Here's a link to the thread with my tasting notes on that brew:
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=13485.0

[reverseapachemaster]

If you're growing them yourself, it seems like you could pick them very young to get the citrus character without a lot of onion and use those to dry hop and/or late boil/post boil additions.

[brewsumore]

If you're growing them yourself, it seems like you could pick them very young to get the citrus character without a lot of onion and use those to dry hop and/or late boil/post boil additions.

Actually they were given to me by a hop farm worker at the end of the season, although I learned not to go asking around for hops like that since I could unintentionally put workers at risk of losing their job.  He filled a box that was a case for multi-rolls of toilet paper full with hops!  I meant to buy them, but they just gave them to me.

Per what hopfenundmalz wrote, it appears possible it was no coincidence that these were the last hops left on the bine. 

Thanks everyone for your responses.  I may indeed try a single hop APA, with bittering charge and hop stand additions only, and maybe dry hops too.

[brewsumore]

I forgot to mention that they are dried-on-the-vine hops, so they are probably quite high in the sulphur compounds!  Still, they smelled great.

[brewsumore]

Just wanted to follow up:

I made a Summit Amarillo Citra IPA, and used Summit as the bittering hop, and also an ounce of the Summits per 5-gal keg as a dryhop, in combination with an ounce of another hop.

The beer before dry-hopping was very clean tasting, with no onion-garlic flavor at all, but of course somewhat lacking in hop aroma, although not bad since I did a 45-minute hop stand following plenty of late addition hops.  I always dry hop my pale ales and IPAs.

Anyway, I dry-hopped in a nylon hop sack in the keg for 3 days at 65F and 4 days at 35F, and then squeezed and removed the hop bag.

Following the dry-hopping, the beer had significant savory overtones with a bothersome onion-garlic flavor, although after a few minutes in the glass exposed to air, the onion-garlic would dissipate mostly, making he beer quite enjoyable.

It took the beer approximately 3 1/2 weeks stored at 34F in the kegerator for the onion-garlic to disappear completely, and now it has a wonderful orange flavor that balances well with the other hop flavors, and I have a delicious, juicy IPA.

So the lesson I learned is that with patience, even when used as a dryhop, in moderation, late season, dried-on-the-vine Summit hops turned out surprisingly delicious.  And I didn't get any onion-garlic flavor at all from them prior to dry-hopping, when used as a bittering hop.