New hop variety -- Crazy cheap

With the 2012 harvest hitting the stores everybody is quickly draining the Amarillo and Citra supplies but I was alerted to a new strain selling at firesale prices.

Hops Direct is selling a new variety they developed called Belma. Their description:

Dual-Purpose variety. 

Dr. Shellhammer from OSU tested Belma™ and created a Pale Ale Malt. He noted the following description: A very clean hop, with a very orange, slight grapefruit, tropical (but not mango/guava, more like pineapple), strawberry, and melon.

Did I mention it is 12% alpha acid?

Now here's the best part: Hops Direct is selling the 2012 crop for $5.25 per pound. Leaf. That's right. $5.25 for a pound of hops. Shipping is very reasonable. If you buy more than one pound the shipping cost gets even more reasonable. I picked up two pounds. The first pound would ship for $10. Adding a second pound added $1 to shipping. Stupid cheap.

I haven't found a lot of information about how this hop works in beer but if the flavor or aroma is foul it will keep me stocked with bittering additions for a long, long time. I'll probably use this hop for a lot of bittering additions but I think it might show up in a saison or two and a black IPA I have in the works.

At $5.25 it probably won't last long -- they want to get these hops out and get positive reviews creating demand for them -- so if you are thinking about buying some 2012 hops you could do a lot worse than buying from hops direct and adding a pound of crazy cheap hops.