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Aussie Hops Series: Vic Secret - Presented By HPA
2 Playsin 1 hour
"We've done some really hop-forward, Brettanomyces-fermented beers which have been really neat with Vic Secret too, just the way that the Brett biotransforms some of the compounds in Vic Secret is pretty cool."
In partnership with HPA, Australia's leading hop grower, we've created a series of podcast episodes – an Aussie Hop Series – looking closely at some of the country's most recognised and impactful hop varieties.
Over the course of the series, we've spoken to leading brewers from across Australia and abroad, as well as experts from HPA, discussing their experience with these hops, what they've learned along the way, as well as some technical tips and tricks to maximise the impact of these hops in their beers.
We wrap up the series in the company of Zach Nichols, owner and brewer at Cellar West in Colorado, and Chris Swersey from HPA. The hop in question is Vic Secret, known for its pine and pineapple qualities.
Zach and Chris talk to host Craig Williams about how and where the hop works best, the hugely diverse range of beers in which Vic Secret is used by Cellar West, how Chris first came across the variety, how the "oil monster" evolved over the years, and more.
For more information on HPA and their range of hops, visit hops.com.au.
To find out more about featuring on The Crafty Pint Podcast or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Aussie Hops Series
00:00:05
Speaker
Hey guys, it's Craig from The Crafty Pint here, back with another edition of our Aussie Hops series presented by HPA. ah Through this series, we've been talking to brewers both in Australia and around the world about some of their favourite Australian
Meet Zach and Chris: Discussing Vic Secret Hops
00:00:19
Speaker
hops. Today, I'm joined by Zach from Seller West Brewery in Colorado and Chris from HPA, and we're talking all things Vic Secret.
00:00:28
Speaker
Zach, great to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to get into it. Excellent. And Chris, thanks for joining us as well. Thank you so much. Now, Chris, I might start
What Makes Vic Secret Unique?
00:00:39
Speaker
with you. If you can kind of, let's talk Vic's Secret. Let's break it down. Give me the the kind of background of this hop.
00:00:45
Speaker
ah What sort of flavor profile are you looking for and and more? Yeah, sure. Vic's Secret was, it was bred in 2000, but commercialized in 2013. So 12 years ago now.
00:00:58
Speaker
and Its pedigree is is pretty complex. It's got Aussie, European, and North American um you know heritage. um So very, very complex genetics in it.
00:01:12
Speaker
It's, um you know, from a brewer and drinker perspective, that it's most it's most, I guess the the the easy sort of elevator pitch for it is kind of like,
00:01:25
Speaker
upside down centennial in a way. So centennial is, you know, as a classic U.S. aroma hop. It's driven primarily by pine with some, you know, fruit underneath it. And centennial um I'm sorry, Vic's Secret is the opposite. So it's got sweet fruit on top, mostly like, you know like pineapple and and tropical with pine underneath that. So it's kind take Centennial, turn it on its head and then make it much, much bigger.
00:01:50
Speaker
Centennial's got it a little over 1% oil and Vic's Secret's, you know, around two and a half. So it's ah it's a monster. And, you know, a little little bit goes a very long way.
Zach's Journey at Cellar West Brewery
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, nice. And Zach, for our listeners in Australia, um first of all, just tell me whereabouts you are, which brewery ah you work with and and what's the kind of background there?
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, so i'm ah I'm the owner and brewer at Cellar West Brewery and we're ah we're a small brewery outside of Boulder, Colorado. So we're, don't know, half an hour from Denver and 15 minutes from Boulder, if people are familiar with with that area.
00:02:23
Speaker
But we've been open. We just had our eight year anniversary. but I've been in the the industry professionally for probably closer to, man, I'm creeping up on 20 years. I'm probably 16 years, something like that. um And yeah, so we at Cellar West, we do a little bit of everything. We've, we kind of, we kind of started out doing a lot more Belgian and farmhouse style beers than anything, but we've since expanded that.
00:02:50
Speaker
You know, we do everything from loggers these days to, west coast ipas we don't really do a lot of hazy ipas but um yeah a lot of like clean hoppy beer ah but we still do a lot of saisons and and britannomyces fermented beers and stuff like that um but even with that we still like to play around with hops a lot so chris have you been to cellar west like give us a give us a sense of the vibe yeah well yeah back in the day um you know i used to work for the brewers association and um The home office is in Boulder and there there are an awful lot of breweries in in the Boulder, Colorado area. And one of our one of my fellow staffers finally clued me into Cellar West one time and said, man, you've got to check this brewery out.
00:03:35
Speaker
We went over and it was love at first pint. I've never had a ah bad beer there. and absolutely love the, uh, the Belgian style, especially, um, you know, your Cezanne's, I, I had a cassette or two, you know, really, you know, two, two and a half percent, really delicate beers that are just off the hook, fantastic, crushable
First Encounters with Australian Hops
00:03:57
Speaker
beers. And, um, I do remember one of those, I think made with, made with Vic, um, anyway,
00:04:04
Speaker
after that After that first visit, I made a point of coming back many, many times after that. I very much admire the but brewery. More recently, Zach very very generously shared a Cezanne recipe for our our new recipe book that came out last year, but and um including some some very highly detailed usage tips about you know how much to add and when to add hops all that.
00:04:28
Speaker
We're very thankful for that. so anyway, thanks a million for that, Zach. Yeah, happy to help. Yeah, nice. um We'll have to make sure we visit next time we're in Colorado for sure.
00:04:40
Speaker
Now, Zach, in terms of Vic's Secret and I guess Aussie hops in particular, what's the appeal for you? Where where did you sort of first come across ah the these particular hops?
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the first the first hop that, or Australian hop that I use, um ah you know, commercially would have been Galaxy. And looking back, that probably would have been sometime, maybe Chris can can touch on that a little bit with Galaxy's timeline, but I think it was probably relatively widely commercially available ah
Exploring Vic Secret in Beer Styles
00:05:10
Speaker
in the U.S. It would have been probably 2010 or 11 that, that I kind of came across it and start playing with it and, and you know, full size production beers um and really just, you know, obviously Galaxy, totally different story than, than Vic Secret. They obviously have some similarities, but,
00:05:29
Speaker
just really unique, uh, flavor and aroma profile compared to a lot of what we had in the U S at the time, obviously the palette that we get to work with, uh, hop wise has expanded exponentially in the last 15 years, but, um, galaxy really kind of, kind of opened my eyes to, to Australian hops and just some of the unique, uh, specifically fruit characteristics we were getting out of that, that galaxy at the time.
00:05:56
Speaker
um And so, yeah, we started to play with, I was at a a brewery in Boulder at the time and we we were doing some beers with Galaxy. Galaxy started to get a little harder to to come across and get your hands on around 2012, 2013. So um we started playing around with Topaz, which was also a really nice hop.
00:06:15
Speaker
um I think we, for us, we had to kind of learn how to use Topaz as opposed to Galaxy, because I think to us, um, you know, the hop brokers we were working with at the time were pitching Topaz to us as sort of like a substitute for Galaxy, which um also really great hop Topaz is, but we found that it definitely carried some, some different, some, you know, differences then than, than Galaxy. So um yeah, Topaz we played around with.
00:06:42
Speaker
And then, yeah, over the last few years, man, I think I've probably, you know, I've got the the HPA list of all the, you know, Australian grown varietals in front of me. I think I've pretty much um Ella, I'm not sure if I played with, but I think we've definitely used everything, including Eclipse, which is, you know, the newer one. And, um but yeah, Vic Secret, um that was a hop that I came across, you know, around that same time, it probably would have been more like 2014.
00:07:09
Speaker
um There was a, ah there's a brewery called Avery Brewing, which I'm sure some people in Australia and definitely the US know. um They're still around pretty large brewery, but At the time they rolled out this new, i want to say it was a double IPA. It was called Raja and a big, unique pineapple profile to it. And yeah, just really enjoyed that beer. And I had some friends who were brewers over there at the time and just started to pick their brain about, you know, what they were using hop wise in that beer.
00:07:40
Speaker
And the main hop, as far as I understood was, was Vic secret and I'd never used it. I think I'd maybe heard about it a little bit and, I bugged bug the folks at Avery to send a bag or two my way and started playing with it and really fell in love with it. Again, you know, carries some similar things to so other Australian hops I had used, including Galaxy, and but um also very distinct in its in its own right.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, nice. and And I guess from that evolution, like which beers are you now using Vic Secret in, like, ah of your portfolio? Yeah. Yeah. We don't have, I wouldn't say we have any flagship beers per se. We've got three or four beers that we brew pretty frequently, but we don't have one or two beers that are around all
The Versatility of Vic Secret Hops
00:08:25
Speaker
the time. They kind of rotate and come and go. And that's kind of how we treat a lot of the beers that we use Vic Secret in. So, you know, last year we did like an American pale ale.
00:08:35
Speaker
Well, it's Australian pale ale essentially, but sort of in the the mold of an American pale ale. And it was um all Vic Secret on the hot side in the kettle. And then like 90% Vic Secret in the dry hop with a little bit of Galaxy mixed in there too, um which was a fun beer to do. But then we've also done a lot of Vic Secret beers that were more Saison or Belgian style. So we've done clean Saccharomyces Saisons that had Vic Secret either on the dry hop or in the the Whirlpool. We've done really hop for Britannomyces fermented beers, which have been really neat with Vic Secret too, just kind of
00:09:15
Speaker
the way that the Brett kind of biotransforms some of the ah compounds in Vic's Secret is pretty cool. um So we've we've played with it quite a bit. We've used it, I don't know, there's probably 15 to 20 different beers I've brewed at Cellar West that have had Vic's Secret in them in one way or another, whether it was 100% Vic's Secret Saison or 90% Vic's Secret Pale Ale or a beer that just had a little bit of Vic's Secret sprinkled in to kind of play with some other you know, Australian or New Zealand or American hops. So we've, we've used it pretty ah ah across the board.
00:09:47
Speaker
so and And certainly sounds like it's, it's a really versatile hop that you can use across different styles. I guess, would you, how would you describe Big Secret in terms of, I guess, it's, it's point of difference to other hops on the market? Is it sort of that versatility or?
00:10:04
Speaker
I think, ah you know, it presents differently, certainly and in different ways, depending on where you're using it. ah The, the yeast that you're using it all the way down to like, is it going to a beer that's going to finish bracingly dry versus a beer that's maybe going to be a little fuller and sweeter, it presents a little differently.
00:10:22
Speaker
But I think, you know, to Chris's point, I think he he hit the nail on the head with just the characteristics that we find being, you know, more of that like pineapple forward with um some of that kind of like edgy pine note, um, in the background and depending on what levers, uh, we've pulled in the brew house and in the cellar, you know, you can kind of finesse certain things within Vic secrets come out a little more.
Technical Tips for Using Vic Secret
00:10:48
Speaker
Right. So if you, if you want a little bit more of that pine, um, you know, we've found that going, you know, in the, in the hot side, in the kettle, uh, a little earlier. Right. So maybe in the last, like,
00:11:02
Speaker
15 minutes of the boil. If you had some big secret, um, it seems like some of those, those, uh, oils or essential aromatics, uh, that carry a little more of that fruit character might get boiled off and you kind of carry through a little more of that like edgy pine note to it into the flavor.
00:11:17
Speaker
Um, but in beers that we've done, you know, big, heavy dry hops exclusively, ah with Vic secret, we're definitely getting a lot more of that like pineapple, juicy pineapple note coming through.
00:11:29
Speaker
so it's ah It's a fun hop to play with. And, um you know, every year, similar to most hops, that that hop presents a little differently, ah depending on the lot and the year that we're getting. um I would say over the years, I've seen it go a little bit from being more, I mean, I remember like early lots of Vic Secret that we were getting in 2013, 2014, being like, almost to the point where you had to be careful how you used it because it was so tropical and so like,
00:11:59
Speaker
leaning towards that almost like overripe tropical fruit kind of note where if you're just like careless with it, it would, it would just dominate a beer. um And I think the pine character, I feel like has sort of come up a little bit and in the last few years and the fruits kind of taken not a backseat, but definitely come down a little bit.
00:12:18
Speaker
So it's a little more balanced. I think it's a little more forgiving these days of a hop to work with. You can kind of apply it across the board where, yeah Early on, it was it was a hop that if if you weren't careful about the way you're using it, it could easily dominate a beer.
Impact of Vic Secret's Oil Content on Beer
00:12:35
Speaker
so yeah Awesome. um I love those kind of little technical tips there. Anything else that you've learned i guess through your time working with a Big Secret? Any other tips or tricks that you might be able to share? yeah i think um you know In regards to dry hopping, we've found that when we do cooler dry hops,
00:12:53
Speaker
cooler dryhops um meaning like dry hopping the beer, you know, 62 or under 62 degrees Fahrenheit, I should i should say, or or under, where we seem to pull out a little more of that fruit note, where if we're going a little more of a warmer dry hop, 68, 69, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, or even for like a longer time period, we seem to pull out a little more of that ah pine character.
00:13:19
Speaker
um The other thing about Vic Secret that I've found that I think is true with a lot of Australian hops, um is as Chris said, it's, it's an oil monster. Um, and so that hasn't really changed over the years in my experience. And so that is something to take into consideration. and And what I mean by that is, um, you know, it can, uh, I think the, the bitterness profile, uh, that I get out of big secret, um, can, can sort of lean pretty heavy into that kind of like bitey pine character.
00:13:51
Speaker
um So I tend to to like to go with something a little more ah neutral for bittering when I do a Big Secret forward beer, um you know, like a Hellertale Magnum or something like that, um and then really load the Big Secret into the late kettle and dry hop.
00:14:07
Speaker
um And also with that, a lot of the beers that we do and a lot of beers that I've had from other brewers, and I've sort of heard this across the board, that that predominantly feature ah Australian hops, including Big Secret,
00:14:21
Speaker
is because that oil load is so high percentage wise that they just, ah you gotta them a little more time in the bright and maybe even in the final package, they just take an extra day or two to kind of come around. they They stay green a little bit longer.
00:14:37
Speaker
um Once they do kind of turn that corner after a couple of days, they really are are beautiful beers, but you just gotta to kind of treat treat beers that are, in my experience,
00:14:48
Speaker
predominantly feature Australian hops a a little differently because that that oil consideration Chris is that is that something that uh I guess you could add any insight to as well around that difference the oil content and so on between Australian versus your classic
Pairing Vic Secret with American Hops
00:15:02
Speaker
U.S. hops yeah I mean just in terms of you know cost of use like like Zach was saying a little bit goes an awful long way um You know, they they cast, Vic especially, casts a very long shadow.
00:15:18
Speaker
And so, um you know, if you're if you used to two and three pounds per barrel, um you know, with a U.S. dip light hop at one and a half percent oil 1.2 percent oil, you can probably cut that back quite a bit and still get a an enormous sensory outcome from from from Vic, um you know, with...
00:15:40
Speaker
with a lot lower a lot lower usage rate. And we've we've heard that a lot from brewers around the world, and especially in Australia. I definitely think that that high oil content too. It seems in my experience that you know you get a slightly, and don't want to use the word hazy, but that oil seems to want to hang around in suspension um a little longer.
00:16:03
Speaker
um you know If you're doing like a Simcoe dry hop versus like an all galaxy or big secret dry hop, For whatever reason, it must be related to the oil. those Those beers tend to kind of want to remain a little little more hazy.
00:16:15
Speaker
um And I've actually heard from some of our friends who do a lot of hazy IPAs that beers that they've done that it it seems that Southern Hemisphere, right because I think it's New Zealand hops as well, um they they seem to want to stay hazy longer and maybe something related to that oil content. Yeah.
00:16:33
Speaker
The Antipodian effect, I think. some Now, you mentioned sort of obviously pairing Vic Secret with with other hops. Are there any particular pairings that you you really like to play with or you like the um the outcome?
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think i've i've really i really enjoy doing classic American hops with Vic Secret. You know, we've done some beers where it's like a lot of big high alpha beers uh, Australian hops together. And to that point of them just being big oil monsters and really assertive, um, you know, those beers are great in their own right, but they kind of hit you over the head.
00:17:10
Speaker
Um, you know, if you're talking about a big dry hop, like all galaxy eclipse, Vic secret beer versus, um, something that's maybe like 50, 50, you know, cascade and Vic secret, um, just something to kind of tamper down that, that big, uh, profile a little
Introducing Spectrum: A Liquid Hop Innovation
00:17:25
Speaker
bit. So, you know, if we, if we do ah something like a pale ale,
00:17:29
Speaker
ah That's got a lot of what's a hop I could use. So like crystal is a good example. um Kind of old school American hop, really nice hop, pretty subtle. ah The characteristics it has are really beautiful, really nice, like kind of light citrus lemony notes to it, a little bit of floral thing going on, but um can be pretty understated in like a hop, a hop forward beer. So that would be something where I would mix in and a hop like Vic Secrets.
00:17:56
Speaker
and about 25% just to kind of really pop up some of the the profile on um that. So yeah, I think mixing Big Secret with beers that or with hops that do come off a little more understated um works really well.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah, nice. And Chris, um I understand Big Secret is also available in Spectrum, which is the ah liquid dry hopping product or range. Can you tell me a bit more about that, Chris? Like how does that work and what what does that offer brewers as another piece of toolkit?
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, just briefly. Spectrum is a you know it's a it's an advanced product. It's a so a liquid format hop. It's all the all the good stuff from the hop and and minus the vegetative stuff matter you know so um same thing a little little bit goes a long way spectrum is intended to be used on the cold side um although some people do put it on the hot side but um it's really easy to flash off an awful lot of aroma very quickly um So if you if you do that, you probably want to you know dip hop it, drop that whirlpool temp down to high 70s, maybe low 80s.
00:19:03
Speaker
But primarily on the cold side as ah as a dry hop. And it really wants to be fully fermented. It
Experiments with Liquid Hops: Spectrum and Incognito
00:19:09
Speaker
does contain... alpha acid, unisomerized alpha acid and coho malone as well as all all the aromatics.
00:19:16
Speaker
So, you know fermenting is it's nice because you get all the biotransformation. You um lose lose the the alpha acid you know in in your yeast just like you normally would.
00:19:28
Speaker
And um at the same time, yeah you know you don't lose any any beer in the you know when you're dumping hot matter off the bottom at the at the end of, you know once you've cold crashed the tank. So a lot of times you can yield you know four or five as as high as maybe 8% more beer off that tank.
00:19:47
Speaker
Anyway, really really lovely products. really lovely products They take a lot less space for storage. There's freight advantages, et cetera, et cetera. But um yeah, and the Spectrum is it fantastic. It's so and a neat way to get true to target aroma that you expect from the raw hop.
00:20:06
Speaker
You know, I started brewing an awful long time ago, and we had access to all different oils, and why none of them really did the trick. But advanced products these days are have come light years, and Spectrum's becomess definitely one of those.
00:20:19
Speaker
Is that something you've you've looked at, Zach, in terms of um whether you you'd like to use those sort of liquid hop varieties? Yeah, yeah we've we've never used the Vic Secret version of Spectrum. We've we've used a little bit of Spectrum in the cellar before. We've used some Incognito, which is a similar product, more kind of designed for the whirlpool.
00:20:40
Speaker
um we've actually We've actually used Incognito. I don't know, Chris, are you guys doing Incognito for any Australian products? Yeah, we've got a couple. um And I guess the poorly kept secret is we're about to have Galaxy Incognito available. and it's It's in development right now. We we hope that it'll be up Craft Brewers Conference.
00:21:01
Speaker
Oh, cool. Yeah, we like using Incognito. What we'll do is we'll actually ah we'll put it into the fermenter that we're about to fill. And then we'll knock off you know half a barrel to a barrel of hot wort into that fermenter, just to kind of sterilize everything, get that incognito into solution.
00:21:17
Speaker
And then we'll start chilling our wort and knocking out and filling that fermenter up. But that seems to be a really great way to to keep all the you know the good stuff that you want to get out of incognito um into the into the fermenter.
00:21:30
Speaker
But yeah, Spectrum we've used a little bit. I've not used the vi the big secret Spectrum, but definitely interested in playing around with it. I love those products.
Conclusion and Further Resources
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, nice. Well, guys, that pretty much wraps up our talk, but thank you so much for your time and for joining us. i Zach Nichols from Seller West and Chris Swersey from HPA.
00:21:50
Speaker
And we'll be back with another edition of our Aussie Hops series presented by HPA. ah In the meantime, for all the info you need on the very best Australian hops, head to www.hops.com.au.
00:22:03
Speaker
Thanks so much, guys. Cheers.