Is there a trick to getting a good hop presence...

Ale's What Cures Ya · Post by **Ale's What Cures Ya** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 1:45 pm

Other than just throwing in a boat load of hops? I'm drinking a bottle of my home brew today, and it has zero hop flavour or aroma. It has a lot of bitterness, but none of that nice citrusy stuff I was expecting. I used about 2.5 times as many hops as the recipe called for, so I was figuring it would be a big time hop bomb.

Does it have something to do with with the fact that I pre-boiled 2 gallons of water and only boiled the hops and extract in 3 gallons of water then mixed the two in the fermenter?

zachariaIPA · Post by **zachariaIPA** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 2:06 pm

I dry-hop my IPAs with 2-3 oz of hops (per 5 gallon batch) and they are dank!

matt7215 · Post by **matt7215** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 2:34 pm

hop flavour comes from latehop additions (last 5 minutes of boil)

hop aroma comes from dry hopping

when did you add your hops?

matt7215 · Post by **matt7215** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 2:37 pm

just saw your post in what are you drinking, you only had bittering additions, thats why you got only bitterness

markaberrant · Post by **markaberrant** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 6:51 pm

Using good quality hops also make a huge difference. They need to be stored properly or they are pretty much useless.

Ale's What Cures Ya · Post by **Ale's What Cures Ya** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 1:55 pm

matt7215 wrote:just saw your post in what are you drinking, you only had bittering additions, thats why you got only bitterness

The book I have says for a 60 minute boil the flavouring additions begin at 30 minutes and the finishing additions begin at 15 minutes or less? I just added the hops when the recipe said to do so, albeit in much greater quantities.

markaberrant wrote:Using good quality hops also make a huge difference. They need to be stored properly or they are pretty much useless.

I used pellet-style hops that had been in refrigerated storage and sealed in a vac-pack.

matt7215 · Post by **matt7215** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 1:59 pm

Ale's What Cures Ya wrote:
matt7215 wrote:just saw your post in what are you drinking, you only had bittering additions, thats why you got only bitterness
The book I have says for a 60 minute boil the flavouring additions begin at 30 minutes and the finishing additions begin at 15 minutes or less?

unfortunantly that just isnt the case, you may get some hop flavour from a 15 min addition but you will get no hop aroma.

to get hop aroma without dry hopping you should add hops after the boil as you cool your wort.

your 30min addition was a bittering addition.

ritzkiss · Post by **ritzkiss** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:00 pm

Additions at flameout and dry hopping make a big difference, I noticed you didn't add anything after 15.

Hopaholic · Post by **Hopaholic** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:00 pm

I believe not doing a full boil may be a contributing factor as well. I just tried dryhopping in a keg and that works great for aroma.

matt7215 · Post by **matt7215** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:26 pm

Hopaholic wrote:I believe not doing a full boil may be a contributing factor as well. I just tried dryhopping in a keg and that works great for aroma.

not doing a full boil will reduce ibu's, doesnt seem to be the problem here

markaberrant · Post by **markaberrant** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:18 pm

Ale's What Cures Ya wrote: I used pellet-style hops that had been in refrigerated storage and sealed in a vac-pack.

Freezer would be better, but not bad.

duncan · Post by **duncan** » Fri Oct 14, 2011 6:17 pm

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/a ... teHops.pdf

This PDF by Zainasheff is pretty handy on tips for maximizing hop flavour/aroma.

Ale's What Cures Ya · Post by **Ale's What Cures Ya** » Sun Oct 16, 2011 8:49 pm

duncan wrote:http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/a ... teHops.pdf

This PDF by Zainasheff is pretty handy on tips for maximizing hop flavour/aroma.

Nice, thanks a lot.

So I'll try a ton of late hop additions next time and see what happens. Here's a question, what does boiling the wort for 60 minutes without adding any hops do? Does it change the malts in some way?

markaberrant · Post by **markaberrant** » Sun Oct 16, 2011 8:53 pm

Ale's What Cures Ya wrote:Here's a question, what does boiling the wort for 60 minutes without adding any hops do?

Drives off DMS
Sterilizes the wort
Decreases volume/increases gravity
Darkens colour of wort
Generates the hotbreak
Drops PH

Ale's What Cures Ya · Post by **Ale's What Cures Ya** » Sun Oct 23, 2011 5:33 pm

markaberrant wrote:
Ale's What Cures Ya wrote:Here's a question, what does boiling the wort for 60 minutes without adding any hops do?
Drives off DMS
Sterilizes the wort
Decreases volume/increases gravity
Darkens colour of wort
Generates the hotbreak
Drops PH

Thanks for the info.