Vic Secret
Pineapple and pine, cleaner and less overwhelming than Galaxy while sitting in the same territory.
Alpha acid
14-17%
14% - 17%
Against every variety on this site
Typical use
Dual
Enough alpha to bitter and enough character to finish the same beer.
At 60 minutes
54 IBU
For 30 g at the mid-range alpha in a 20 litre batch at 1.050, by Tinseth
Origin
Australia
Publicly released in 2013
Where it belongs
- American IPA
- Hazy IPA
If you cannot get it
Ranked by how convincingly each one stands in. A substitution changes the beer; matching the alpha acid only matches the bitterness, not the aroma.
Buying it
Hops are perishable and alpha acid falls with warm storage. Buy vacuum-packed pellets, check the crop year and the alpha figure printed on the pack, and keep them in a freezer. A pack stored in a warm cupboard for a year can have lost a third of its bitterness, which is the usual reason a repeated recipe comes out tasting flat.
Find Vic Secret pelletsAn affiliate search link, scoped to this variety rather than to a guessed listing.
More from Australia
Galaxy
13-15%Passionfruit and peach at very high intensity. A little goes a long way and it dominates a blend.
Ella
13-16%Floral and aniseed at low rates, tropical and spicy at high ones. One of the few hops that genuinely changes character with dose.
Topaz
14-18%Resinous tropical fruit with a clay-like earthy note underneath. High alpha and a heavy hand needed to control it.