Mikkeller, the one-man ‘roving brewery’, makes a series of many (19, over the years?) beers from the exact same IPA recipe*, except each uses a single, different variety of hop.
Beer + Science? How could I say no? And two different friends thought the same way– so twice in the past month+, I’ve had a chance to do a side-by-side tasting of 16 of them with a group of friends. Fascinating.
The quick summary: if you want to taste just a subset of these that cover a variety of styles, I’d recommend these 10: Columbus, Amarillo, Sorachi Ace, Challenger, Simcoe, Willamette, Palisade, Centennial, Galena, and Cascade. Or if you want to do an evcn smaller tasting, of say 4 of them, I’d suggest Sorachi Ace, Simcoe, Columbus, Palisade (and again, maybe Cascade, as a “reference hop”).
This was less about finding specific beers I’d drink again (since they’re rare and expensive), and more about the hop-learning since I’d never really though about hops beyond the “Pacific Northwest vs. Everywhere Else” distinction. So here are my notes and fuzzy memories, a combination of both times through a 16-beer set (almost identical sets: 15 of the 16 beers overlapped).
Most interesting / my favorites:
- Columbus: slightly skunky and lemony smell, somewhat bitter but good. I was able to pick it out later in a blind taste test.
- Amarillo: only slightly bitter with a nectarine or peach taste once it warmed up. Excellent!
- Sorachi Ace: by far the most distinctive and unusual. someone pointed out it has an herbal perhaps dill-like taste. it also has a smell that reminds me of a saison (even though that’s a different beer style and yeast). Worth tasting, though I’m not sure I’d want to drink a whole one.
- Challenger: Bright, mild, a taste that goes on for a while. I didn’t think of a better adjective, but I liked it quite a bit.
- Simcoe: A sort of strange smell but a taste that’s somewhere between spruce and orange. Excellent. A friend said the smell reminds him of cat urine, and then I couldn’t un-smell that (thanks a lot!)… but I still like the taste.
Second-tier favorites, or ones I had different impressions of the two times I did this (for whatever reason: late in the evening, with food, distracted, lack of a sufficiently discriminating palate, …):
- Galena: sweetish, slight pine taste, nice
- Willamette: interesting, slightly citrusy, not too bitter.
- Centennial: piney but less strong than Cascade, pink grapefruit, nice
- Palisade: slightly buttery? not quite banana but something like that. slightly farmhouse/belgian smell? couldn’t quite place it. very lightly bitter.
- Cluster: nicely balanced hoppy and lemony
The others:
- Cascade: Hard to rate because it’s such a taste I’m used to (strongly present in Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, for example)
- Super Galena: Mild, long but faint taste, an odd bitter finish
- Warrior: I couldn’t distinguish any smells or tastes beyond a general hoppy bitterness,
- Mt Hood: Mild enough that the rest of the beer comes through more strongly, a slightly sweet and balanced beer, didn’t leave a strong individual impression.
- Magnum: slightly bitter but I couldn’t distinguish a unique taste
- Tettnanger: a slightly sweet orange taste up front, but then it turns harsh
- Bravo: bland, hard to differentiate (but also one of the last beers I tried, both times)
Interesting… I wonder if there are any other beer collections like this. Well, there are the Mikkeller coffee stouts, one of them made with civet coffee, but it turns out I prefer my beer and my coffee separated:
*Postscript: Someone on a homebrew board claims to have the base Single Hop beer recipe from Mikkeller:
“For the single hop beers they are all brewed with the same base-recipe:
67% pilsner malt
11% Cara-Crystal
11% Munich II
11% Flaked Oats
Yeast is American ale (Wyeast 1056/WLP099)
Hops 60min, 15min, whirlpool and dry.
About 100IBU.
Hope you can use this!
Best, Mikkel”
The Robot Must Eat 
Mikkeler’s bourbon barrel aged stout is among my favorite.
Thanks for the tip– I’ve never had that one. I also recently had the Goose Island Bourbon Country Stout strongly recommended to me (it’s apparently seasonal and comes out in November).