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I'm thinking of using my base IPA recipe and doing centennial and citra additions only in the last 15 minutes and then cool to 175 Fahrenheit and steep a few ounces for 15 minutes or so. Thoughts? What differences can I expect in the hop flavours and bitterness?

I think you'll like it. I've done lots of brews with late only(15 min or less). Try it and see. I just did a brew with late and hop stand just like you are proposing, but with Cascade. It turned out well. Greg Nash told me once something about studies saying late should be balanced with a bittering addition. Maybe he'll chime in.

I hope he won't mind me quoting him, but I thought it might be important.

Okay so.... you really need to whack it with some early bittering hops IMO. If you want to nail it at the end with west coast flame-out hops that's well and fine if it's the route you want to go but you'll never get the balanced and integrated bittering it should have by hop-bursting only. Even on IPAs and the like it's been proven over and over that hop-bursting only doesn't provide desired results in the bittering and balancing department.

I think it's a great idea to do things like late hopping and FWH in isolation, then you know what contribution they are giving. Then mix and match in future brews for a more complex/complete effect. My last IPA was FWH, Late, Hop stand & dry hop. I think it`s my best one yet.

I don't mind the quotation at all. 'Tis what it is, the only way you'll know for yourself is to go ahead and do it. Hop-bursting only doesn't make bad beer by any stretch, it just sort of leaves you wanting.

Off you go....

NASH wrote:I don't mind the quotation at all. 'Tis what it is, the only way you'll know for yourself is to go ahead and do it. Hop-bursting only doesn't make bad beer by any stretch, it just sort of leaves you wanting.

Greg, I've been watching the Heady Topper video LeafMan posted, and the guy (John Kimmich) doesn't like to boil hops because he says it produces a chlorophyl flavour, although from the discussions he may be using 5 min additions, if so he's boiling them a bit. He uses hop extract for bittering. Do you have any thoughts on that please? I think, in my optimistic way, that I might have been doing the same kind of thing a bit, as I do FWH instead of bittering additions and I skim all the FWH hops off the surface just as the wort is coming to the boil, and follow that up with late/flameout etc.

GuingesRock wrote:

NASH wrote:I don't mind the quotation at all. 'Tis what it is, the only way you'll know for yourself is to go ahead and do it. Hop-bursting only doesn't make bad beer by any stretch, it just sort of leaves you wanting.

Off you go....

Greg, I've been watching the Heady Topper video Leafman posted, and the guy (John Kimmich) doesn't like to boil hops because he says it produces a chlorophyl flavour, although from the discussions he may be using 5 min additions, if so he's boiling them a bit. He uses hop extract for bittering. Do you have any thoughts on that? I think, in my optimistic way, that I might have been doing the same kind of thing a bit, as I do FWH instead of bittering additions and I skim all the FWH hops off the surface just as the wort is coming to the boil, and follow that up with late/flameout etc.

Skimming FWH out is wrong imo. You're certainly not getting much, if any bittering component out of them. Leave them in there. How many micro's do you think skim wort? I went through the homebrewing phase of skimming, and over-analyzing almost everything else to death. Then I went to school and became a professional brewer, these two things combined were a pretty huge enlightenment on which points are worth concentrating on, skimming isn't one of them. You know, most homebrewers strive to no end to make beer as good as their fav microbrewery, or some fabled brew from afar. You can bet the makers of said fabled brews aren't skimming, and the likelihood of you winning that bet are extremely high. You like my beer? I don't skim. If I did, nobody would notice. FWHing is a bittering technique. Those hops still need to remain in the boil for the duration to isomerize and thus extract alpha acids. If you don't leave them in for the boil you won't be getting much isomerization, so IBU calculations are out the window.

As for the chlorophyll, anything is possible. I'm just doing what brewers have done for centuries, adding bittering hops to wort To me it doesn't taste like chlorophyll but if it does, I guess I like it I'm sure it does have an effect on the beer, how couldn't it? You're throwing a bunch of vegetative matter into the wort. As I mentioned previously about dry-hopping, all you want from the hop are select compounds or components none of which are part of green leaf matter, really. Yet most beer as we know it today is brewed this way, and we love it with green matter as part of the overall flavour profile. Using bittering extract is a great technique, the fewer hops you throw in a kettle, the less wort-loss you deal with, and that's a win win. Wort-loss is huge in highly hopped brews. There's a lot more going on in the making of a great beer than the use of hop extract though, I think. Does extract make the beer better? Clearly Kimmich thinks so. I'm not so sure. I am sure it changes the beer. A lot of people think Heady Topper is the best beer on the planet, a lot think it's a damn fine DIPA amongst a huge lineup of damn fine DIPAs. Anyhow, it is what it is. Kimmich makes wicked fucking beer, as do others. It'd be fun and interesting to try the extract method to compare and do side by side blind tastings with say Fathom. At the end of the day though, I think you have far bigger fish to fry at this point.

Thanks for the considered and informative reply.

Yes IBU calculations are out the window. Yes to most of it. But still one question in my head.

Mash hopping gives very little, or no bitterness, but at the higher pre-boil temperatures some isomerization is supposed to be going on. According to BS at 90C the isomerization is approximately 50% of the same time spent boiling the hops. My 14 gal takes so long to come to the boil on the stove that the wort might spend an hour or an hour and a half in a temperature range where some isomerization is happening. Again ...I'm probably being optimistic.

...but then you might say ...what's the difference between the hops spending time at 90C and time at 100C, and there probably isn't much, if any difference. The only thing I can think of is stewed hops are being cleared out when I skim just before the boil. Maybe the disturbance and commotion caused by the boil might extract more vegetal flavours, but it's getting more and more into fantasy land (the land of fabled brews from afar). It's been good to discuss this and get my head around it a bit more.

I was doing this long before I even heard of Heady Topper, but you did catch me out trying to emulate some "fabled brew from afar"

What's the question?



Transmitted from the Hop-phone.

So Nash, long and short I'd want to try to balance the bittering charge with the late additions in terms of IBUs?

NASH wrote:What's the question?



Transmitted from the Hop-phone.

Don't know

jtmwhyte wrote:So Nash, long and short I'd want to try to balance the bittering charge with the late additions in terms of IBUs?

I'm not saying that but it's not a bad idea.

I usually look at recipes in reverse by putting the quantity of finish hops I want in first and go from there. In a 70 IBU formulation I'd like to see at least 35-40 of those come from a bittering charge. Of those I'd dedicate about 30 IBU to FWH.

Transmitted from the Hop-phone.

GuingesRock wrote:

NASH wrote:What's the question?



Transmitted from the Hop-phone.

Don't know

Transmitted from the Hop-phone.