Vic Secret

BarthHaas describes it as pineapple, pepper, ginger, marjoram, lime.

Dual purpose

Origin Australia

Code VIS

Bred by Unrecorded

Two or more independent sources

Smells like: Pineapple, Black pepper, Spice, Herbal, Lime
Bitterness: Very high (14–22% alpha)
In the glass: 25 beers here
Usually paired with: Mosaic, Citra, Galaxy
Swap it for: Enigma · compare them →

Brewing values

range on filetypicalbreeder or labmerchant

Alpha acid

14–22% typical 17.9

14 22

2 sources, spread of 8%

BarthHaas14–21.6Range over the last 4 crop years.
Crosby Hop Farm14–22

Beta acid

6–8% typical 7.1

6 8

2 sources, spread of 2%

BarthHaas6.3–8Range over the last 4 crop years.
Crosby Hop Farm6–8

Alpha to beta runs about 2.5:1, 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 59.4% of total oil — 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:

Myrcene39.0%
Humulene10.2%
Caryophyllene9.8%
Linalool0.5%

Aroma

Pineapple
Black pepper
Spice
Herbal
Lime

In the glass · 25 beers from 6 breweries

Fresh Flow Block 15 Brewing
Abort the Court IPA Cloudburst Brewing
Anyone’s Ghost IPA Cloudburst Brewing
No Cheating IPA Cloudburst Brewing
Please Hold For The Next Available Representative Cloudburst Brewing
The Greatest Cloudburst Brewing
VIP Lounge Cloudburst Brewing
No Quitters Ex Novo Brewing
Black Magic Dreams Great Notion Brewing
Alpenglow: New Zealand Edition Reuben's Brews
Batch #2299 Southern Hemisphere IPA Reuben's Brews
Reuben's Crush the Vote Reuben's Brews

All 25 beers with Vic Secret →

Brewed alongside · in 24 beers that use Vic Secret with other hops

Mosaic 1146%
Citra 1042%
Galaxy 1042%
Nelson Sauvin 521%
Simcoe 521%
El Dorado 28%
Loral 28%
Taiheke 28%

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

What to swap it for

Enigma 51

aroma 60 · oils — · chemistry 91 partial data
Pilgrim 46

aroma 73 · oils — · chemistry 56 partial data
Eclipse 44

aroma 38 · oils — · chemistry 95 partial data
Chinook 40

aroma 57 · oils — · chemistry 57 partial data
Azacca 37

aroma 43 · oils — · chemistry 66 partial data
Zeus 37

aroma 38 · oils — · chemistry 72 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