Let's get one thing straight - I'm not a massive fan of single hopped beers, to me hops are (usually) good at bittering, aroma or flavour and not many of them can multitask, which I suppose makes them male... (actually, hop cones only grow on the female plants, the males are not needed; hops are dioecious, which means they have separate male and female plants. Only the female produces the flowers that are used for brewing).
So, against all that's gone before, yesterday we brewed a single-hop beer! And not only that, we used a hop which is quite rare and not often used, Millennium. It's a reasonably new US hop which is used in dark beers over in America but not seen on our shores often, so when Jay suggested using it and Gazza found we could get some the project seemed a goer!
It's a high alpha bittering hop at 17.1% alpha acids (the stuff that gives beer it's bitterness, this is a very high figure) but we used 10kg in the copper and a further 5kg will be added to the tanks for dry-hopping. We were pleasantly surprised with the almost Pacific character we got from the cones, with pineapple and tropical fruits coming off during the break-up.
So, although the beer doesn't have a name yet, "Millennium" is sat in FV2 about to commence primary fermentation and it should be an interesting one alright... look out for it in about 3 weeks' time when it gets casked up.
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