Battle of beer siblings

This month's Beer52 delivery introduced me to their Elements project which was designed to showcase the difference in beer by tweaking singular ingredients like yeast, malts and, of course, hops!

The way it works is that each beer in this box has an almost identical twin; a beer that was brewed on the same date, in the same conditions with the difference being a single ingredient. I was really intrigued by this concept so I was obviously pretty excited to try it out!

I chose to start with the New England IPA couple.

As the name implies, the first one uses Citra hops, while for the second they went for El Dorado.

As expected, they look identical. Beautifully golden haze with nice heads.

While they might look the same, they certainly smell and taste differently. With the Citra, I knew exactly what to expect as this is one of the most commonly used hops in the last couple of years; lovely grassy and citrusy aroma. Taste wise, big citrus flavours with a passionfruit ending.

The El Dorado on the other hand surprised me. The aroma is not as in your face as the Citra, it feels more delicate; grassy but fruitier. The flavour was mellow to start with so I was disappointed for about 5 seconds until all flavours started showing up. Lots of fruit and a lovely light sourness.

After the first few sips, I really preferred the Citra, probably because of the familiarity but then the subtle flavours won me over. The more I was having from both, the more I was leaning towards declaring the El Dorado the winner of this experiment.

I had fun with trying these beers and it is always amazing to realise how much difference the choice of hops make and how widely it affects the overall flavour of a beer. Looking forward to trying the other pairs!

For me, the El Dorado hops won this round!

Cheers for having a look!