Nelson Sauvin is a wonderful hop. It is also incredibly versatile, too, regardless of beer style or dispense explains Michael Donaldson for NZ Hops Ltd.
New Zealand is so special to James Heffron he’s basically built his Cornwall brewery around Kiwi hops.
He first travelled to New Zealand nearly 25 years ago, 15 years before he would start Verdant brewery and deliver some of Britain’s most punchy and popular hop-forward beers.
“I was travelling there from 1999 to 2001 and there was a better beer scene at that point in New Zealand than at home.
“I met my wife Hagit there — she’s from Israel and was back-packing — and we went back in 2010 to celebrate 10 years together. It was that trip that I have these memories of great locally-made beers, and there were so many good breweries.
“There was one day when we visited a brewery and bought some beers to takeaway. We drove through to the Nelson Lakes region and there were hop fields on either side of the road and it blew my mind that here were these amazing ingredients that were going into the beer I was drinking at the end of the day.
“It was after that trip that I went home and started home brewing.”
“I was travelling there from 1999 to 2001 and there was a better beer scene at that point in New Zealand than at home.
“I met my wife Hagit there — she’s from Israel and was back-packing — and we went back in 2010 to celebrate 10 years together. It was that trip that I have these memories of great locally-made beers, and there were so many good breweries.
“There was one day when we visited a brewery and bought some beers to takeaway. We drove through to the Nelson Lakes region and there were hop fields on either side of the road and it blew my mind that here were these amazing ingredients that were going into the beer I was drinking at the end of the day.
“It was after that trip that I went home and started home brewing.”
Heffron and his wife had a food business, specialising in Middle Eastern food, Fal Falafel, but when he got the beer bug a brewery was soon on the horizon.
“I approached beer recipes in the same way as our catering business – loads of flavour and making people love what they are consuming.
“We registered Verdant in September 2014, and we were brewing on a 200-litre system and holding down other jobs but straight away I was hassling [distributor] Charles Faram in the UK to get a contract for New Zealand hops.
“I knew we needed these New Zealand hops to make a success of Verdant. And Nelson Sauvin was right up there in the hops I wanted to contract, and it plays an important role in our brewery.
“New Zealand Hops, and especially Nelson Sauvin, are just striking. There’s a really interesting balance between fruit and savoury, there’s a hedgerow kind of thing, and a wildness about them. I genuinely struggle to describe them.
“Nelson for instance is gooseberry, white grape and white wine but there’s a sweatiness, a dankness, a diesel note, some nettle, celery tops — it’s just so multi-layered.
“When it comes to Nelson beers, I take a sniff and a whole world of different flavours emerge. You don’t only get one and stop, it just keeps on going.”
Heffron understands there are critics who don’t like Nelson Sauvin, but he has a clear message for them.
“I do see some people say ‘I don’t get on with Nelson Sauvin’. When I see that, I genuinely think: ‘you’re insane’. It’s one of the most amazing hops in the world. There’s nothing you can replace it with.”
Also in the south, Kent brewery Curious have an obsession with Nelson Sauvin, but for much different reasons.
Brewer Wes Lynch says the brewery’s flagship lager is dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvin specifically to create a beer that will appeal to wine lovers.
That dates back to the creation of Curious in 2011 when it was started by the Chapel Down winery in Tenterden, on the premise of winemakers who were curious about brewing.
“And what’s the easiest hop to tie back to wine-making?” Lynch asks rhetorically. “Nelson Sauvin.”Curious beers were initially contract brewed but in 2019 Chapel Down decided to build a brewery and taproom.
“Of course 2019 wasn’t the best year to start a brewery …”
The impact of Covid on a brewery that had just been commissioned resulted in Chapel Down selling the brewing operation.
“However we still retain a lot of that original brand identity,” Lynch says, “and we still try to celebrate the terroir and provenance of this area, not just the wine, but the locally-grown hops. “Our flagship beer, Curious Brew Lager, was always based around a heavy dose of Nelson Sauvin in the dry-hop.
And while we’re now focused on local hops from a sustainability perspective, English hops are not known as massively citrussy, flavourful, hops so we’re very selective about what hops we import and we want to be punchy and impactful with those hops that we do import. Which again fits Nelson Sauvin perfectly.”
The other link back to wine-making for their lager is a secondary fermentation with champagne yeast which adds effervescence and dries out the beer, giving a nice canvas on which Nelson Sauvin can shine. Carbonated at 5gm/litre, the result is a “dry, punchy lager but not in an overwhelming way”.
The big dose of Nelson Sauvin in the dry-hop compensates for the dryness and the high bitterness (35 IBU) in the 4.7% ABV lager.
“That citrussy sweetness rounds it out and makes it more palatable to the regular lager drinker while craft drinkers enjoy that extra bitterness and dryness,” Lynch says.
At Redemption Brewery in London, Andy Moffatt is a huge fan of the way Nelson Sauvin’s heavy-hitting aroma can lift cask ale.
Exposure to oxygen more in cask beer slightly reduces the punchiness of the hops, and in an era when even cask beer drinkers are looking for a hoppy hit, hyper-flavoured New Zealand hops work perfectly.
“You don’t get the full punchiness of the aroma hops in cask beer compared with keg beer, but the New Zealand hops work very well because they are punchy in their own right but they don’t overwhelm the beer in terms of sessionability,” Moffat says.
He has been using Nelson Sauvin for more than 10 years in his flagship Big Chief IPA and he likes the way that hop adds value, aroma- and flavour-wise, without taking away from a drinker’s ability to have a few pints.
“Sometimes with keg beer, those bigger hops — like Citra or Nelson Sauvin — can result in an oily, slick feeling going down your throat and it can feel too much sometimes. That intensity, after you have a pint or two, can feel like too much.
“But in cask ale with Nelson Sauvin, you still get that hop character standing out, with the gooseberry and tropical notes, but it’s a bit more subtle and balanced so you don’t get that strong flavour coming through. Nelson Sauvin, in cask, works very, very well.”
