Sixpoint Wants You To Pick Your Hops For Autumnation

From Sixpoint Craft Brewery – You may not be able to change the way the seasons turn, but this year, you will be able to choose how it affects your beer.

The seasons are changing as we speak — the wet months of spring replenishing the soil before a blast of sunshine throughout the summer. Right now is the formative time for the hop plants as they make their first crawls toward the sun, twisting around stakes and trellises, budding green leaves and eventually, resinous flowers to brew with. These hop cones, or flowers, won’t be ready to use until late August or early September. But we’re already planning to use many of them fresh in our seasonal fall beer, Autumnation.

Autumnation is the celebration of the annual hop harvest: a beer subtly seasoned with pumpkin, ginger and white pepper for spice, and using copious amounts of fresh “wet” hops for wet-hopping the entire batch with. This beer won’t make its entry into cans for several months, but we are inviting you into the creative process behind it by allowing you to choose the fresh hop for this year’s brew.

On The Sixer, our blog, you can now choose from five different American hop strains that you’d like to see wet-hopped in the 2012 Autumnation brew. The fresh hops will be added last in the boil, providing maximum flavor and aroma, and also during the secondary fermentation prior to canning for added fresh hop aroma.

The hops to choose from are:

Amarillo – Citrus fruit, sweet floral perfume. Moderate bittering.

Centennial – Subdued citrus, pine, strawberry. Moderate to high bittering.

Chinook – Intense pine, wild onion, pungent spice. Moderate bittering.

Citra – Dank, citrus, funky, herbal. Low to moderate bittering.

Simcoe – Grapefruit, pine, grass. Moderate to high bittering.

Whichever hop receives the most votes from readers in our autumated poll in the blog post, we’ll make arrangements now to procure as our selection for this beer. Anyone may vote for their preferred hop fromnow until June 15th, and we’ll announce which hop we’re brewing with fresh on June 16th. Choose your hop now, drink your own Autumnation in
the fall.