Brooks Groves

Rakau

Not yet written. Fill in from a real source, then update meta.status.

Dual purpose
Origin New Zealand
Bred by Unrecorded
Two or more independent sources
Bitterness
High (8.8–12% alpha)
In the glass
19 beers here
Usually paired with
Citra, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin
Swap it for
Southern Cross · compare them →

Brewing values

range on filetypicalbreeder or labmerchant

Alpha acid

8.8–12% typical 10.2

2 sources, spread of 3.2%
  • New Zealand Hops Ltd9–12
  • Crosby Hop Farm8.8–10.5

Beta acid

3–6% typical 4.3

2 sources, spread of 3%
  • New Zealand Hops Ltd3–6
  • Crosby Hop Farm3.8–4

Total oil

0.8–2 mL/100g typical 1.6

2 sources, spread of 1.2 mL/100g
  • New Zealand Hops Ltd0.8–2
  • Crosby Hop Farm1.7–2

Alpha to beta runs about 2.4:1, which is what governs how fast the bitterness fades in storage.

Oil composition

  • Myrcene58.8%
  • Humulene24%
  • Farnesene7.8%
  • Caryophyllene7.6%
  • Geraniol1%
  • Linalool0.7%

Normalised to 100% so this hop can be compared like for like. The published components sum to 85% of total oil in the source data.

In the glass · 19 beers from 7 breweries

All 19 beers with Rakau →

Brewed alongside · in 16 beers that use Rakau with other hops

  1. Citra 638%
  2. Mosaic 531%
  3. Nelson Sauvin 425%
  4. Nectaron 425%
  5. Waimea 319%
  6. Motueka 319%
  7. Riwaka 319%
  8. Amarillo 213%

Counted from the hop lists of every beer in What's in the can: what Pacific Northwest brewers actually put next to Rakau.

What to swap it for

  • Southern Cross 53
    aroma — · oils 96 · chemistry 81 partial data
  • Vista 52
    aroma — · oils 79 · chemistry 94 partial data
  • Styrian Cardinal 52
    aroma — · oils 91 · chemistry 81 · shifts dual to aroma partial data
  • Centennial 50
    aroma — · oils 74 · chemistry 94 partial data
  • Simcoe 50
    aroma — · oils 82 · chemistry 85 partial data
  • Taiheke 50
    aroma — · oils 87 · chemistry 80 partial data

Scored on aroma overlap, oil composition and acid chemistry, then nudged up where a brewer has vouched for the swap by hand. An axis we haven't measured earns nothing, so a hop known only by its acid numbers caps out around 30 — the score is how much evidence there is for the swap, not just how close the numbers happen to be. Anything under 50 is a different beer, not a substitution.

Pedigree

Parentage unrecorded.

Notes on this record

purpose defaulted to dual, unconfirmed -- was not researched individually for this bulk scaffold pass. Correct before publishing.

For brewers and data folks: this hop as JSON · the source file

HopLove is an open dataset first and a website second. Every figure on this site is rolled up from cited observations in data/hops/, and the same build that made this page wrote ../../api/v1/hops.json — free, no key, no rate limit.

Built 2026-09-30T05:41:31.791Z from 232 cultivar records. Data under CC BY 4.0, code under MIT. Source and corrections on GitHub. Not affiliated with any hop breeder, farm or merchant; variety names are the marks of their owners.