Talus Hops Are Pretty Awesome

Talus is not a new hop. It grew out of the Haas breeding program and earned its name (not an easy process) in 2020. Stan Hieronymus, who covers hops more extensively than anyone else—by an order of magnitude—predicted it would be a hit almost three years ago. But look, it’s really hard to keep up with new hops. I write about beer for a living and even I can only keep track of a small handful. Add to that the fact that modern brewing is focused less on showcasing hop varietals than using blends to produce certain flavor profiles, and it’s hard to pick out individual hops. Finally, given their field-by-field and year-by-year variability, not to mention the myriad ways they can be used in the brewing process, getting a “true” sense of any hop is a mug’s game these days. Half the time, breweries don’t even mention which hops they use.

So Talus, like Vista, Adeena, McKenzie, Luminosa, was just one of those names floating around the periphery of my knowledge. Fortunately, Double Mountain just released a new single-hop Talus beer (inevitable punny name: “Go Ask Talus”), and the hop flavors and aromas are really something. We’ll get into it in a minute, but I think Stan’s right. It seems like an elegant, versatile, and “fine” hop that has plenty of new world character but also some notably noble qualities. I could imagine it becoming a serious brewhouse workhorse.

Mangosteen

It’s nearly impossible to sort out the new hops by description alone—because so many sound the same. Here are some adjectives; see if they call to mind a particular hop: “citrus, flowers, grapefruit, stone fruit, pine.” Sounds like … every American hop, from Cascade to, well, Talus, which those adjectives actually labor to describe. I cheated slightly, omitting a couple slightly unusual terms also used to describe Talus, oak and coconut, which do hint at some distinctive character. But overall, that list includes a tremendous range of flavors, overlaps with almost every other modern American hop, and therefore tells you exactly nothing. Most hops do taste different, though, and in sometimes profound ways that defy the puny list of flavors we have to describe them. (Imagine trying to explain the difference between a lemon and lime to someone who’d never had either.)

In Double Mountain’s beer, I would point to an entirely different class of fruits to describe the Talos flavors. Some equatorial fruits are fleshy and incredibly sweet, aromatic, and intense—it’s the basket of qualities we reference when we say “tropical.” But not all tropical fruits are like that. One group of white-fleshed fruit stands out for their similarities and unusual elements: lychee, longan, and rambutan (all related), the flesh on the seed of the cacao plant, and mangosteen. They are creamy to rubbery in texture, but all have a creaminess to their flavor, as well as a floral element, and some sweetness. Of these, mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is the most intense and complex, though it’s a relative scale. If mangos to to 10, mangosteens top out at about five. They have a tiny bit of acidity, a sweetness that has elements of white wine grapes and stone fruit, a hint of citrus, a definite creamy note (and texture, which enhances it), and their nose has a gentle floral quality, like fruit-tree blossoms. There’s a lot going on, and it’s surprising as you munch on one to keep encountering yet another wrinkle in the flavor and aroma profile.

That’s what Talus tastes like. Nothing’s a precise match, but it’s a lot closer than the laundry list of fruit Haas uses to describe Talus. Importantly, thinking of mangosteen reorients your expectation about the type and intensity of flavor. When we see “pear” as a flavor note, we expect it to be gentle; when we see grapefruit, assertive. Talus has a lot going on, but it’s not super intense. In that description, I think the “coconut” is what people are pulling out of the creamy quality. The “citrus,” “grapefruit,” “flowers,” and “stone fruit” are all elements you also find in mangosteen, but all at a more delicate intensity.

Talus

Go Ask Talus used pellet and cryo hops in their process, and I assume it got used from the kettle all the way through. In their typical way, Double Mountain gave the beer a stiff dose of kettle hopping, which in this case revealed how “fine” the hop is. It’s very clean bitterness with nothing ragged or jagged to scrape your tongue. This points to the unexpected background of the hop.

It’s a daughter of a Sabro plant that was open-pollinated. Sabro is one of those newer hops I know. It’s hard to miss if you’ve ever encountered it in a sufficient dose. With Neomexicanus parentage, it’s off-the-charts intense, with coconut and cedar. It can be a lovely accent, but in the manner of habaneros—you don’t want too much.

So Talus contrasts its mother in terms of brassiness. But beyond intensity, Talus has an unusual quality for an American hop: its alpha to beta acid ratio is 1:1. (Sabro is closer to 3:1.) I’m not sure where the science is on these ratios, but there may be some support for the connection between an even ratio and “fine” bitterness.

When I asked Twitter about Talus, a few brewers contradicted my own experience and said they’d gotten a stronger, more Sabro-y profile from them. This may get back to hop selection and methods—or differences in our tasting hardware. But in Go Ask Talus, I found the opposite. Like a fresh mangosteen, I found the flavors complex, but not overly intense and not at all weird. In fact, it struck me that the flavors had a more European character, and I thought it might do very well in a lager. As I drank the beer, I liked it even more. With warmth, the flavors started to open up and become more floral. I only had one bottle (thanks for sending it, Double Mountain!), and by the end of my glass I was seriously considering driving to Woodstock to fetch another one at the brewery. Perhaps it’s not easy to coax the same flavors out of Talus every time, but if Go Ask Talus is at all typical, this will quickly jump up my favorites list.

I’ll throw it to you—what have been your experiences, either brewing or drinking, with Talus-hopped beers?