I like beer! - IPA’s and similar atm, but i drink most beer. Looking in to start brewing myself (having a kit at home) I’m also looking in to growing my own hops.
Do you have any recommendations on what verity? Something that could be used for many different brews but have a distinct taste.
Cascade is a hop that grows well throughout the US (assuming you live there) and can be used in a wide range of american focused styles (APA, American Stout etc) and tends to be fairly high in bound thiols which you can unlock by using a yeast strain that can free them to create extremely tropical, fruity IPAs. It also has a solid AA% making it a fairly good bittering hop.
I started some Cashmere rhizomes this year. At my old house I had nugget which was kind of limited on character I found.
I got into brewing because I wanted to try the random hop that had been growing in my parents yard for ages. Turned out ok! Likely not a noble variety but it suggests that basically any hop will “taste like hop”.
Have you checked what’s even available to you? In practice, you will be limited by which hop rhizomes are even sold in the Swedish market.
Here in Germany, I could buy Cascade, Centennial, Comet, Ariana, Callista, Tango, Chinook, Polaris (all of these are probably interesting enough for IPAs and Pale Ales), all the typical German varieties, both landrace and older breeds, and some English ones as well.
What hops you should grow is more determined by your growing conditions than what you want to drink.
I live in NM, so I have two varieties of NeoMexicanus, plus a new drought tolerant variety called Vista.
I generally shoot for varieties that are hard to get new, so that’s a good fit for me.
However, if your in Sweden I don’t even know if you can grow hops outdoors. Your climate is about as opposite mine as we could get and still both be growing hops!