Speaker: If you remember hops are added to beer, primarily in order to give beer it's bitterness to balance the sweetness from the malt. There are other reasons as well for adding hops such as the fact that hops are a preservative, they are an antioxidant. They are antibacterial or they have the antibacterial qualities and so if added to beer for hundreds and hundreds of years, I think the first documented case of the hops being added to beer was back in the eighth century and we add the hops -- for this particular beer, we have three different hop additions. We have the hops in the beginning of the boil, the hops are added at the beginning of the boil, provide the most bitterness because it's the boil that actually extracts the acids from the hops to provide the bitterness.
We then add hops later on about 20 minutes before the end of the boil. Those hops are added for the flavor and we add hops right at the end of the boil, literally in the last minute of the boil, to give the beer the aroma that we wanted to have. So the hops we are adding now is the bittering hops for the beer. The type of hops that we use for this particular beer is Malt Cascade, which is known as an American variety of hops. It is actually one of the most famous American varieties of hops. It provides a character to the beer, that is very citrusy. There is almost, almost like notes of grape fruit that you can pick in the aroma and in the flavor of the beer. You really can't make it American Pale Ale, I think without using cascade hops and so that's why we use this hops flown in from Washington State and we are -- added this to the beer.
So how do we now how much hops to add to beer. So very big question and actually lot of it has to do with everyone's own personal, own personal opinion about what makes good beer. Inside the hops are something called Alpha acids. Those acids are contained inside the flower in little pouches at the base of the flower. That alpha acid determines how much bitterness is extracted from the hops when that alpha acid is boiled. All hops are rated based upon the level of their alpha acid. For example the cascade hops that we are using today have an alpha acid content of 7.5%, which is actually pretty high for hops, but again because hops are farm product. It's a harvested product. From year to year the harvest changes. So this particular year the cascade hops were harvested with an alpha acid content with 7.5.
The higher the hop content, then obviously the more bitterness will be extracted per pound of hops that we add, which means that we can actually add Zeus hops. In addition there are other compounds in hops that contribute not just to the bitterness, but also to the aroma of hops, to the flavor of the beer and so different types of hops are known for the different types of aromas or flavors that they contribute to beer.
There is a group of hops called the Noble hops, which are hops that has been grown in Europe for centuries. They typically provide a very delicate, fine sort of aroma and flavor to the beer. There are other types of hops that are much more aggressive, much more interface. Cascade is one of them that when a beer is brewed with cascade hops and you open that beer, everyone in the room knows that you just opened that beer. It's a very assertive aroma and it also has a very assertive flavor, but this is part of the stuff as we brew, we pull together and to make the whole wide variety of beers that are available today.
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