{"id":12963,"date":"2016-02-19T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=12963"},"modified":"2016-02-16T16:26:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T00:26:33","slug":"beer-of-the-week-thorn-st-got-nelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2016\/02\/19\/beer-of-the-week-thorn-st-got-nelson\/","title":{"rendered":"Beer of the Week: Thorn St. Got Nelson?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Thorn
Thorn St. Brewery’s Got Nelson? India pale ale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the Beer Writer: <\/strong>On the botanic side of brewing there are certain money-hops, the flavor and aroma profiles of which keep hopheads clamoring for more. Breweries often reference such en vogue hops right in the names of the beer\u2014Citra, Mosaic, Cascade, Simcoe. With the rising number of brewing companies across the world, getting some of these hops is becoming more difficult. A common brewer-to-brewer question is \u201cGot [insert name of popular hop here]?\u201d One of the most sought-after hops\u2014and certainly the most coveted New Zealand varietal\u2014is Nelson Sauvin. Known and enjoyed for its tropical flavor and Sauvignon Blanc-like wine undertones, its local rise to fame coincided with Alpine Beer Co.<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s Nelson IPA (a key example of a successful money-hop moniker). Now, many breweries use it, provided they can get their hands on some Nelson (as it\u2019s called for short). Count North Park\u2019s Thorn St. Brewery<\/strong><\/a> among them thanks to this approachable 7.2% alcohol-by-volume India pale ale (IPA), which has a slightly lighter body than one might expect, allowing the hop to come through with a good amount of punch. It\u2019s definitely a \u201cfull\u201d Nelson of a beer!<\/p>\n

From the Brewer: <\/strong>\u201cEver since I first had Nelson Sauvin from Alpine maybe 10 years ago, I loved that hop. I know there is Chinook in it as well, or at least there used to be, but you totally got that lovely white wine\/grape bouquet from that beer. And at the time I had it, New Zealand hops were very hard to get, especially that one. As a home-brewer, I would buy it when and wherever I could, but usually way over-priced and, more often than not, I had to use NZ varieties like Pacific Jade, Pacific Gem, NZ Hallertauer and Green Bullet. Fast-forward to just a couple years ago, Thorn Street had been open about a year and I\u2019d been able to contract a lot of our favorite hops: Amarillo, Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Cascade. But, of course, not Nelson. After bugging my rep from Hopunion<\/a><\/strong> nearly every week, I finally got a call from her to let me know that she had a surplus of Nelson hops that had not been needed by a larger brewery. Cash-flow was very tight but I told her I would take all she had and put them on a credit card. I had to store the majority of them in a chest freezer in my garage, which my wife wasn\u2019t a huge fan of but I was stoked nonetheless. The only thing that I could think to brew was a single-hop IPA. I mean, if the hops are so hard to get, why would I blend them out with other hops and dilute the goodness? It\u2019s a very straightforward, simple recipe that lets the hops shine through. I used about 10% wheat in the beer to soften the palate a little as well as improve the head retention and add a little \u2018rustic haze\u2019 to the beer. It\u2019s not very bitter at all, but instead places the emphasis on the flavor and aroma of the Nelson hop. For me, that equates to white wine grapes, stone fruits and honeydew melon. We currently brew Got Nelson? as part of our rotating IPA series along with beers such as Tropic Daze and Mystic Gnome, but we have secured hop contracts for 2016 and 2017, meaning that we should be able to offer it to a wider audience beginning in about a year. Unfortunately, the area around Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand is small, and currently there are no plans to expand the crop. With larger breweries contracting the hop in larger amounts, it has become nearly impossible to contract this hop from the farmers any further out to the point that the contracts are not being offered anymore.\u00a0 So for us at Thorn, it may mean two years of a good run and then we will have really no choice but to retire it\u2019s jersey. It may be something to be enjoyed in the moment then relished when it\u2019s gone, but isn\u2019t that life itself?\u201d\u2014Eric O’Connor, Brewmaster, Thorn St. Brewery<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Beer Writer: On the botanic side of brewing there are certain money-hops, the flavor and aroma profiles of which keep hopheads clamoring for more. Breweries often reference such en vogue hops right in the names of the beer\u2014Citra, Mosaic, Cascade, Simcoe. With the rising number of brewing companies across the world, getting some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[368,369,1],"tags":[1353,1701,376,1461,442,390,2502,1739,2483,1010,1858,15,1439,2357,1637],"class_list":{"0":"post-12963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-beer-news","7":"category-beer-styles","8":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","9":"tag-sdbeer","10":"tag-barrio-logan","11":"tag-beer","12":"tag-beer-of-the-week","13":"tag-brandon-hernandez","14":"tag-craft-beer","15":"tag-got-nelson","16":"tag-india-pale-ale","17":"tag-indiebeer","18":"tag-ipa","19":"tag-nelson-sauvin","20":"tag-north-park","21":"tag-san-diego","22":"tag-thorn-st","23":"tag-west-coaster","24":"entry","25":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-3n5","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}