The next event of the Twin Cities Perfect Pint Beer Club.

When: Friday, April 10, 2009
Cost: $20
You must be a member of the club to attend. Go to the Twin Cities Perfect Pint Beer Club to sign up and RSVP.

Hops! Humulus lupulus. The bitter and spice of beer. First mentioned for brewing in 1079, once banned in England as a “wicked and pernicious weed”, hops only slowly triumphed over the herbal mixtures called gruit once used to bitter beer. Their various acids and oils provide bitterness to balance the sweetness of malt and give beer many of the flavors and aromas that many people identify as “beery.”

For this meetup we’ll focus on hops. We’ll taste beers that highlight the fruit of the “bine” in all of its variety, from the sublime perfume of Czech Saaz in the Bohemian Pilsner to the subtle grassy/floral notes of an English Bitter and the grapefruit and pine of the American IPA. We’ll push the bounds of bitterness with the palate numbing Double IPA and maybe even take on a specialty beer or two.

This is the second in a series of three meetups in which we will explore the main ingredients in beer, malt, hops, and yeast. At each session we will taste beers that highlight one ingredient over the others to develop a better understanding the flavor and aromatic contributions of each ingredient.