While hops are to beer what grapes are to wine, they are often the unsung heroes of the brew and the quiet ingredient added to the beer-making process to give beers their unique, bitter taste and aroma.
Preferring the icy winters and longer summer days of the Northern hemisphere, growing hops in South Africa has been an uphill battle. This challenge led to the development of the first locally-bred hop, Southern Brewer, in 1975.
"In traditional hop growing areas, winters are freezing and days in summer are about three hours longer," said Laurie Conway, general manager of SAB Hop Farms located in George, which developed J17.
"Before 1975 we were growing an international hop variety that yielded between 600 and 1 000kg per hectare. All our locally bred varieties have the potential to produce about 2 100kg per hectare, a big improvement on the international varieties we've tried."
According to Conway, the most important criteria in developing a new hop variety is to support brand differentiation - they are developed to have distinctive qualities that will differentiate one beer from another. "You get high alpha hops and aroma hops. High alpha hops have high levels of alpha acid, which is the main contributor to beer bitterness, and aroma hops have low alpha levels [of alpha acid] and high levels of beta acid, which contribute the aroma or 'hoppines'."
Describing beer brewed with J17 as smel-ling of "gooseberries andfruit salad", Conway said that this aroma - while no bitterness was lost - was what made it so special.
"The new craze in microbrewing is for flavoured beers using flavoured hops so the microbrewers are very interested in J17." SAB supplies about 160 small customers with hops.
SAB Hop Breeder Beverley-Anne Joseph led the team that developed the 'baby' of the family and in due course, J17 will be given a name to take its place among the other local hop varieties produced by SAB - Southern Brewer, Southern Star, Southern Promise, Southern Dawn, Southern Passion and Southern Aroma. How about George top hop.
Hop cones.
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