randallized beers

Organoleptic What? Just Try the Beer By MATT LEE and TED LEE SINCE the Middle Ages, brewers have flavored beer by adding the fragrant flowers of the hop vine (Humulus lupulus) to a boiling barley mash. A new device now lets barkeeps in on the action, allowing them to charge their beer with an extra dose of flavor at the moment the tap is pulled. The Organoleptic Hops Transducer, as its inventor, Sam Calagione, calls it, is an industrial-grade water filter, three feet long, that can be packed with a pound of fresh hops and attached to a draft beer line between the keg and the tap. When the bartender pulls the tap, beer is forced through the hops, dissolving some of the aromatic resins from the flowers before the beer enters the glass. The result is a beer with a refreshingly herbaceous flavor, with notes of oregano and pine, as well as a slightly funky, swampy nose (the hop vine is in the Cannabaceae family, which includes hemp and marijuana). Mr. Calagione, 34, who is the president of Dogfish Head, a brewing company in Milton, Del., sells the Organoleptic Hops Transducer to bar owners at cost ($88) as a way of encouraging barkeeps to educate their customers about the importance of hops. According to Mr. Calagione, the Hops Transducer is not likely to be used as a corrective for underflavored light beers. "It's the higher-alcohol ales that work best with it," he said. "The alcohol acts like a solvent, and more effectively strips the hop oils off the flower." He said he hopes the device will allow customers to tune in to the subtle nuances of the different hop varieties, like Cascade and Willamette (most of the crop in the United States is grown in Washington State and Oregon). To that end he encourages bar owners to pair specific hop varieties with individual beers. A note: Mr. Calagione's nickname for the Hops Transducer is Randall the Enamel Animal, because the hop resins that end up in the beer are reported to have a gritty feel in the mouth that can give drinkers the impression that their tooth enamel is being dissolved. Although a recent tasting produced no such sensation, the name Randall has already entered the lexicon of die-hard beer enthusiasts, in chat rooms on Web sites like www.beeradvocate.com, where postings weigh the merits of "randallized" beers. The beer can be found in Manhattan at the Blind Tiger Ale House, 518 Hudson Street (West 10th Street); at Regional Food and Drink in Washington; and at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Del. It will be available in mid-April at the Gate in Brooklyn, the Twisted Spoke in Chicago, O'Brien's in San Diego and the Brickskeller in Washington.