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Vic Secret™ is our new budding star. While she’s been seen in seasonal and collaboration brews since 2011, she has now joined our headline hops with her first commercial production in 2013. Lighter and less dominant than Galaxy™, yet there is still more than enough character for Vic Secret™ to embellish the world of beer flavour.

The clean, distinct fruit and pine characters of Vic Secret™ are best accessed by dry hopping or whirlpool additions. Late kettle additions have been found to impart a pleasant earthy character, but little fruit. She has very high levels of alpha acid so brewers may find it easier to craft the right balance in their beer by dry hopping.

Vic Secret’s™ story began when she was developed from a seedling created in Victoria in 2000. She actually shares the same mother and father as her sister Topaz. She breezed through the selection program with strong growth and yield, until 2010 when the first brewing trials were conducted.

Initial trial brewing was conducted with Vic Secret™ as a kettle addition late in the boil. Given the seductive aroma of the raw hops, the resulting pleasant earthy character was a little underwhelming. However, it was in the 2011 Bridge Road Harvest green hop beer that she revealed her true character with extraordinary clean passionfruit and pineapple flavours with a light background of herbs and piney resin. Put to the test in Australia and overseas, she has shown us that whirlpool and dry hop additions result in the best flavour pickup.

Seeing her potential, we then propagated several thousand plants from our original experimental plots, planted them out at Rostevor, and waited patiently while they have grown to maturity for their first commercial harvest in 2013.