Mystery Hops - one of three possibilities

I’ve got hops from a rhizome planted about four years ago. The name of the variety is lost, though the nursery narrowed it down to one of the following:

Cascade
Centennial
Mt. Hood
Nugget
Kent Golding

By comparing scent and appearance with nearby plants, I’ve mostly eliminated Cascade and Mt. Hood. My local homebrew pals aren’t much help here. I’ve included a couple pictures here - the hops are a bit overripe. Any insight? Thanks!

Not sure how you eliminated Cascade and Mt. Hood, although Cascade is very distinctive. But if you are solid on that choice, can you work it out by the maturity and “strength” of the hops? Centennial should mature about a month earlier than Nugget, and either of them will be much “stronger” (perception, crushed in fingers, also bittering/oz when used) than Goldings…

this has some maturity ranges, but that depends on management…

http://hops.msu.edu/uploads/files/Hops_ ... t_2014.pdf

Cheers!

I’ve got Cascade and Mt. Hood growing several yards away, and compared the scent and growth habits. Even if I can’t ID them, I’m going to make a small batch SMASH and see what happens. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

There’s a leaf in the bottom picture that is very similar to the Centennial in my garden (deeply cut) and the cones on yours have a similar appearance to mine. How long are the sidearms?

Thanks for the input. The bines are wrapped up in the trellis pretty well, so I picked without pulling down the whole plant. It’s difficult to say the sidearm length exactly, but I’d guess 6-8 feet.

I suppose I just need to track down a few packets of these hops and compare the aroma’s and the smell. I imagine I’ll do that eventually.

For now I’ll just through them in a brew and see how it goes. The worst that happens is bad beer.

My cascade and centennials typically have longer cones than those and a very distinctive aroma. My goldings tend to look more round like your picture and the aroma is a lot “sweeter” in my mind than those, and a lot less pungent. I get even lower aroma from my Mt. Hood than the other three but can’t remember what the cones look like.

I don’t grow nugget, so I can’t comment on that, though I’d like to know how well Nugget does in places like Vermont, where I live.

Old thread, I know, but we got it figured out. Turns out to be Cascade. The one I compared it to was a mislabeled Mt Hood. So, that is sorted out to my satisfaction, and I know my hops better at the end of that process. The SMASH turned out well.

1 Like

Thank you for posting back the results. I’ve looked at pictures of the same hops grown in different areas and they didn’t look exactly the same to me. Pictures of different varieties grown in the same area looked almost the same to me. Good to know you have it sorted out.