Brooks Groves

Spalter Select

BarthHaas describes it as thyme, lemon, cucumber, lovage, green tea.

Dual purpose
Origin Germany
Code SSE
Bred by Unrecorded
Two or more independent sources
Smells like
Herbal, Lemon, Green, Tea
Bitterness
Gentle (2.3–7.6% alpha)
In the glass
14 beers here
Usually paired with
Perle, Saphir, Tettnanger
Swap it for
Opus Β· compare them β†’

Brewing values

range on filetypicalbreeder or labmerchant

Alpha acid

2.3–7.6% typical 4.9

3 sources, spread of 5.3%
  • Hopsteiner3–6.5Data sheet last changed 2020-01-09.
  • BarthHaas2.3–7.6Range over the last 4 crop years.
  • Crosby Hop Farm2.3–7.6

Beta acid

2–6% typical 3.9

3 sources, spread of 4%
  • Hopsteiner2.5–5Data sheet last changed 2020-01-09.
  • BarthHaas2–6Range over the last 4 crop years.
  • Crosby Hop Farm2–6

Cohumulone

21–27% of alpha typical 24

1 source, spread of 6% of alpha
  • Hopsteiner21–27Data sheet last changed 2020-01-09.

Total oil

0.5–0.9 mL/100g typical 0.7

1 source, spread of 0.4 mL/100g
  • Hopsteiner0.5–0.9Data sheet last changed 2020-01-09.

Alpha to beta runs about 1.2:1, which is what governs how fast the bitterness fades in storage.

Oil composition

Not enough of this hop's oil is accounted for to show a breakdown. The sources on file name components totalling 19.5% of total oil β€” most of the balance is myrcene, which the source for this record doesn't publish. Rather than scale what's here up to 100% and invent the rest, here is only what was actually measured:

  • Farnesene18.3%
  • Linalool1.3%

Aroma

  • Herbal
  • Lemon
  • Green
  • Tea

In the glass Β· 14 beers from 6 breweries

All 14 beers with Spalter Select β†’

Brewed alongside Β· in 11 beers that use Spalter Select with other hops

  1. Perle 436%
  2. Saphir 436%
  3. Tettnanger 436%
  4. Saaz 327%
  5. Chinook 19%
  6. Adeena 19%
  7. Ariana 19%
  8. Willamette 19%

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

What to swap it for

  • Opus 51
    aroma 68 Β· oils β€” Β· chemistry 78 Β· shifts dual to aroma partial data
  • Bobek 49
    aroma 73 Β· oils β€” Β· chemistry 68 partial data
  • aroma 50 Β· oils β€” Β· chemistry 93 partial data
  • Aramis 43
    aroma 46 Β· oils β€” Β· chemistry 84 Β· shifts dual to aroma partial data
  • aroma 43 Β· oils β€” Β· chemistry 86 partial data
  • Saaz 43
    aroma 36 Β· oils β€” Β· chemistry 95 Β· shifts dual to aroma 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 β€” 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. Country: breeding origin from general knowledge, not yet cited.

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 β€” 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.