We’ve been playing around with HBC 522 going on 8? 9? years, so when Yakima Chief asked us to brew with it again as part of their FWD program, we didn’t bat an eye. Originally bred as a Centennial replacement, it’s now more of a Cascade replacement? Essentially a new “C” hop but with better agronomics and thus, better yields. In the past, we got notes of blood orange, strawberry, and spruce tips from it (one old observation says “the entire crate of oranges – flesh, peel, leaves, wood”) so we paired it with some Citra and Simcoe, and away we went. Sometimes we have no idea what an experimental hop will taste like, but this one we used our best guess…