I’ve only used Citra as late addition and dry hop. Want to use it as a FWH on next IPA. Should I worry about the cat pee effect if the FWH will be exposed to the entire boil?
You may not get a “cat pee” character at all. I’ve never gotten that from Citra myself. Last year I brewed a single-hop Citra ale and will never make that mistake again. It was too fruity and one-dimensional. Citra is a feature hop in my house IPA (blended with Cascade and Willamette).
I really like it combined with Simcoe and Amarillo. Still playing around with the relative percentages and distributions throughout the recipe though.
Right now I am roughly equal total amount of all three with the Citra weighted more heavily to later additions at <5 min.
Next round I will likely change to 50/25/25 Citra/Sim/Amr in the FWH and leave all else the same.
I want to experiment with other varieties but Citra plays jealous mind games on me and will not let me leave it alone.
KC do you use leaf or pellets?
It seems like last year pellets from Hopunion had some cat quality while the leaf from Yakima Valley had none.
I wonder if It’s growing conditions that can cause this. Even so the cattiness of the pellets was subtle compared to Mosaic or Simcoe.
I think Simcoe has more cat pee characteristics than Citra does. I have an all Citra IPA on tap right now and it is very good.
[quote=“wallybeer”]KC do you use leaf or pellets?
It seems like last year pellets from Hopunion had some cat quality while the leaf from Yakima Valley had none.
[/quote]
Whole from hops direct.
I guess I love cat pee.
I never got that from Citra and love the all Citra Pale Ale. I admit I like Simcoe too; though I am not a fan of cats.
I totally pick on on on the cat pee quality in citra. While a lot of my fellow homebrewers love it, i can’t deal with it at all. I think it depends on the individual.
