Updated 2020-05-15
One feels the excitement of hearing an untold story.
John Hope
I cannot remember where I learned about Belma, another heirloom American hop. It is only grown on one farm in the US. I wanted to craft a recipe that show cased this distinctive hop and decided to create an American style kissing cousin to my English IPA. I am really happy with how this recipe turned out, the only change I’ve made is to increase the hopping, which I will likely continue to dial in to hit the sweet spot.
When thinking about quotes to draw a name from, I was initially drawing a blank. I had a concept of a story I wanted to tell so flipped my usual approach. I found this quote by American educator, John Hope, and felt that it capture the sentiment I was after. The fact it was a historic American felt right to me, as well.
Since the first batch, I decided to convert this recipe into a series, featuring different hops with the same base grain bill. The idea was the same as with Belma. Not exactly a single malt, single hop beer but something that helped really highlight a specific hop or hops.
Recipe and Logs
- I brewed the first batch of this beer in 2018.
- I brewed another batch of this beer, increasing the hopping a little, in 2019.
- I brewed the first batch of this recipe featuring different hops later in 2019. This batch featured Cashmere, which I received as a gift from the Puterbaugh Farm, and Legacy, a late harvest variant of Cluster.