I brought you a peek at the new HopBlast beer aroma enhancer kit, and even news of their Hoppiest Beer Of Your Life Challenge; so I was excited to get a chance to test drive a few HopBlast packets for myself. A big thank you to everyone at HopBlast in sunny Hawaii for sending me a HopBlast starter kit and 7 different varieties of hops to sample. 
So how does it work? Well actually it’s really simple. The kit arrives with a small plastic cage that clips over the edge of your beer glass. The kit (and add-on packets) also comes with sealed packets of hop pellets in several different varieties (Summit, Amarillo, Simcoe, Centennial, Crystal, Citra & Cascade). You open he hops, add them to the plastic HopBlast cage, clip it to your glass and enjoy your beer.
It’s important to note that HopBlast is for aroma enhancement and it is not intended to get into your beer or beer foam and it’s not intended to be tasted or consumed in any way. As you can see in the diagrams above, the HopBlast cage lines up with your nose and is intended to pump up the hoppy aromas as you drink your beer.
So I know what you’re asking already…does it work? Well I’m here to tell you that it definitely does work. The hop aromas are really prominent and it would be really hard to argue that from an aroma standpoint, this easily creates the hoppiest beer you’ve ever had.
I started by using a hop variety that coincided with the prominent hop in the beer I was drinking (Simcoe) and the Simcoe aromas were really pumped up. What I wasn’t expecting, was how much the hops aromas also pumped up the hop flavors in the beer. Aroma and flavor go hand in hand, and the HopBlast definitely changed how the hop flavors tasted. As HopBlast highlighted,
According to Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, up to 90% of what is perceived as taste is actually smell…and I found that to really be true with our first beer.
With the beer I first tested, the Simcoe HopBlast brought back some of the hop aroma lost in the packaging and in the age of the beer itself. This beer was packaged 2 weeks ago and HopBlast Simcoe even brought up that aroma making the beer feel even fresher.
To test the theory, I pulled out a can of a 8-month old IPA, arguably well beyond where a fresh hop IPA should be enjoyed. I clipped on the Citra HopBlast (this beer originally featured Citra) and sampled the beer with and without HopBlast. While the beer itself had a distinct maltier presence that it would have if it were fresh, the HopBlast version definitely changed that a little just through aroma. The HopBlast version hid the malt-bomb that this beer had become, and it was actually significantly better.
From there we tested hop varieties in HopBlast that were not the prominent hop in the base beer and I was surprised at how many combinations we came up with. It was almost like brewing your own beer, just by using hop aromas. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed experimenting with the aroma profiles with all 7 hops that HopBlast sent.
My favorite use ended up being something I had not even considered up front….education. What better way to learn and identify the aromas each variety brings to the beer and what better way to identify the hops in use in some of your favorite beers. Mrs. BeerBuzz even hit on Citra in such a positive way, she went out shopping for beers that feature Citra prominently.
So be sure to check out HopBlast for yourself, try it out and let me know what YOU think…
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