Can it be that the man who championed the phrase “need more hops” actually now wants less?
For a decade, Luke Nicholas of Epic has led the hop-forward revolution in New Zealand – first with his Epic Pale Ale and then with Armageddon IPA, Hop Zombie double IPA, the One Trick Pony series, Lupulingus and the extreme collaboration Four Horsemen of the Hopocalypse.
But with his latest releases, the Stone Hammer series, named for Epic’s sales manager Sten Hansen the beers actually belie the name.
Stone and Hammer are words that suggest you are about to get by something hard and aggressive but what you get is soft, tending towards sweet and oh so hoppily aromatic.
For Nicholas it’s about exploring a “new space” and trying to understand what newcomers to craft beer are looking for.
“Because I get the privilege of traveling to a few different places during the year and seeing what’s new and looking at trends I’ve noticed there’s enough beers like Epic Armageddon IPA – that lean malt base, dry finish … some bitterness, but a lot of hop aroma and flavour. There’s thousands of those on the market – so where’s your point of difference?
“The East Coast IPAs in America are becoming quite trendy. There’s the haziness to them which is a point of difference but there’s also noticeably lower level of bitterness but a lot of hop flavour.
“That’s just created a new reference point for IPAs.”
The East Coast IPAs Nicholas is talking about are slowly making their way to New Zealand most notably through Garage Project’s Party and Bullshit.
Okay. Now it makes sense. @Garage_Project Party & Bullshit is tasting awesome at @BeervanaNZ. pic.twitter.com/ZqLSlBfokh
— Jono Galuszka (@jonogaluszka) August 13, 2016
Those East Coast IPAs, minus the haze, “were my thought process behind the Stone Hammer series … it was `let’s look at that softer bitterness as an influence, and put my personal spin on what it looks like when you pull back the bitterness by 30 per cent”. As a result Nicholas produced three extremely drinkable beers: Thunder Pale Ale, Stone Hammer IPA and Thor, a double IPA.
Nicholas joked that one customer called Thunder, at 5.8 per cent, the “Supercharger killer” as it weighs in at the same ABV as Panhead’s flagship pale ale but with that slightly subdued bitterness and aromatic hoppiness.
The Stone Hammer beers, says Nicholas, are all about “big hop aroma and flavour and much less bitterness”.
The simplest way Nicholas has achieved this down-bittering is by reducing the hops going in to the boil.
“It’s just a lot less bittering in the kettle but it’s all very experimental right now – I’m just putting it out there and getting feedback
“The Stone Hammer IPA is getting the most positive feedback but personally I found that a little too sweet but people enjoyed it the most. Maybe that means my tastes are not where the market is and I have to think whether I’m making beer for a new consumer – that’s what I have to work out: who are these consumers and what do they want. Do they even know what they want?”
It’s a fair question as the change in what people prefer has Nicholas a little perplexed right now. He mentions a popular IPA that’s rating highly on Untappd but which he found “undrinkable”.
“It was one of the worst beers I had this year, I thought it was tragic. The balance was bad, there was a harsh hop flavour, there was like a burnt flavour from the hops which I don’t understand. I nearly gagged it was so bad. Yet on Untapped it’s rating nearly 4 out of 5 – if you’re a four it means it’s one of the best beers in the country. So what’s happening here? Are people buying brands? Is it the label? The colours? It doesn’t make any sense because it’s not about the taste. Or maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old man who doesn’t understand what’s happening in the world. Or maybe my tastebuds are broken?”
Nicholas’ answer to this consumer conundrum is to keep “exploring the area” to figure out how just what kind of bitterness people want.
The ever-, and fast-changing world of hoppy beers will be highlighted when Nicholas makes his annual pilgrimage to the US hop harvest this week. And he arrives there as new research shows a lot of what brewers understood about bitterness in beer simply isn’t true and that modern beers with huge late hop additions – even dry-hop additions – have way more bitterness than previously thought.
The best information on all this is contained in this great article entitled Hop Shift. 
Nicholas is one who understand the new research, which debunks the belief that hops added in the last 10 minutes of the boil add nothing to bitterness. “Old formulas say you get zero bitterness from late additions but no, you don’t, you get bitterness out of it. Even dry hopping at high volume with high alpha acid hops can add bitterness.
Those rules, Nicholas believes, “probably made sense when they were using German noble hops of 3 to 4 per cent alpha acid but with American hops of 7 to 17 per cent it doesn’t translate.”
Nicholas might be experimenting with down-hopping but given the demand and interest in these new styles of IPA, the mantra of “need more hops” still applies because no matter how they are used, we can’t, it seems, get enough of them.
