BeerBorg

As a spin off to the favorite thread I want to start this so the pros can help the newbies (like me er us) who want to, or are starting an exploration of the endless frontier of hop selection.

There are a huge number of hop varieties available for bittering, flavor/aroma and both.

Once a brewer becomes familiar with beer styles choosing a "family" of hops may not be so complicated but pairing and amounts are definitely more challenging.

Brewing software will show the brewer where they are in the range for that style when it comes to IBU and BU:GU but we have discovered that a mark on a bar or a percentage reading just doesn't quite help the newer brewer in translating what that will do to the actual beer.

So I was hoping to start a learning slash philosophical discussion directed at the more experienced and advanced brewers on how you choose your hop combos and how you decide to portion them within your various recipes.

Now I know that beer style A is going to require hop style B so I'm not talking individual recipes here just what your thought process in design is regarding how much you choose to add and how you decide on your pairings/combos from one to the next.

Oh and of course I recognize that we are all brewing different sized batches so if you think that that will have an impact please let us know.


Basically just a discussion of your hop strategy in general.

As far as my strategy goes, it depends on the style of beer, and whether I want to taste balanced bitterness, or more malt, or a particular profile from the particular hops. For example, my regular wheat beers, I like to use fruity hops. Saphir lends a great tangerine taste, and is a low alpha hop, so to get the most of that flavor into the beer, I would use a heavier dose of it (say 0.50 to 0.75 oz for 2.5 gallon batch) in a flavor addition, somewhere around T-25 to T-15 in the boil. Pale ales, IPAs, IIPAs are all styles that put more emphasis on the aroma, but also typically use high alpha hops. These high alpha hops like Centennial, Chinook, and Columbus often have citrusy flavors and aromas, likened to grapefruit, and you won't need much (0.10 to 0.25 oz) to make a bittering addition at the beginning of a 60-minute boil, but then you'll go a little heavier on the flavor addition, and then even more so from the last 10 minutes of the boil to flame out. And then you may even dry hop with these same types of hops, which calls for adding hops into the fermenter after primary fermentation has subsided. Allowing this dry hop addition to sit in the fermenter for several days to a week, or longer, will increase the hop aroma even more.

It is the citrus, in fact Citra hops that got me thinking about starting this thread. We did a LBK size Citra Blonde with the following:

.25 oz. Galena 60 min boil
.50 oz. Citra 20 min hop stand
.50 oz Citra dry hop

We are getting a lot of pink grapefruit but every few sips we are getting hit hard with the cat pee I've seen referred to.
Also all the that we bittered with Galena have an over powering odd flavor and bitterness. But we understood it was a mild and pleasant hop so I wondered if it was amounts or pairings.

I've used Citra quite often but mostly as late addition and dry hopping. I've not had the cat piss smell but I do get a strong smell.

I am a big fan of late addition hopping in big quantities. I use more hops, but I like the taste and aroma more. If my recipe doesn't call for late addition hops, then I usually double up on the dry hopping. But as mentioned, the style plays a big part. You wouldn't do late additions in stouts and porters (though it appears Stone and others have).
I've not used Galena but I looked it up and found that it's considered a 'mellow' hop and 1/4 oz doesn't seem out of place at all.

If the cat pee is a problem, I'd just stick to Citra as a dry hop alone in smaller quantities and mix with something else. I've found it with Simcoe is great but with Amarillo as a dry hop, it gets a bit dank, which is not everyone's cup of tea.

[quote I've found it with Simcoe is great but with Amarillo as a dry hop, it gets a bit dank, which is not everyone's cup of tea.][/quote]

Exactly the kind of info I was after looking for the great pairing but more importantly one that don't quite get along well.

The Galena was paired with Palisade, Summer and Sterling that were all off, a kind of woodsy/earthy that is not a pleasant one. Drinking them as a Shandy is working though.

ya can not go wrong with the Zythos blend BB1. Great for IPA's and Pils

I've got an APA I'm drinking right now that I used Citra and Amarillo in and I'm quite pleased with the flavor!
I used Amarillo as a FWH, then 1.75 oz of Citra and 1 oz of Amarillo as late additions anywhere from 20 mins to 5 mins. Also used 2 oz of Amarillo as a dry hop.
Very citrusy with slight bitterness on the back end.

I did a Citra SMaSH a few months back that I was not entirely pleased with. No cat piss but it was a strange flavor.
Maybe the brewer had something to do with it!

My goto hop for bittering is Magnum because it's clean and seems to play well with others.

I've not come across any pairings that I don't like, but there are varieties that I don't care for. The traditional noble hops just don't do much for me so I suppose pairing them with anything might not be great for my taste.

I'm pretty traditional when it comes to additions: 60 minute bittering, 15-20 for flavor and a small amount for 5 minutes for aroma + dry hop in many cases. The amounts vary with what I am brewing (style-wise, as mentioned above).

I like to hit a few local breweries when I want to find out more about a particular hop. More often than not I can grab a beer using the hop I want to know about, then I can pick the brewer's brain a bit if needed.

Other than that, I'll brew up a known recipe and just swap in the new hop I want to try to see how it goes. It's sort of a SMaSH methodology I suppose.

I'd second Ron's take on Magnum and I'd add Bravo to that bittering list.

I generally use Sterling or Saaz for any beer that would require a noble type hop but I like Tetts and Willamette as well.

I'm big into C Hops (Chinook, Centennial, Cascade, Columbus) for flavor and aroma in my pale ales & ambers but I'm currently brewing one (Bewitched Mod) with Amarillo hoping that I'll like that as well.

Usually I work up a trial recipe and then bounce it off Dag to see if I'm on the right track. Long time ago I was going to so something weird with an Octoberfest and Chris(t872) steered me to the definition of marzen which is all about the malt. After that I ended up using Tetts and the result was fantastic.

I despise Palisade hops and I'm not all that sure that I really like Northern Brewer but I need to do another recipe with NB to see if that influence was what I didn't care for in the brew I made with it or if it was just the pairing I chose.

I was telling my co-brewer that what we did wrong in second stage hop tasting experiment was adding the Galena as bittering hop to three different batches. I think we would have learned more if we chose one of the first Blondes and used three different bittering hops. I think the comparison aspect would have been better.

Have since used Magnum and agree it is good haven't tried the Bravo. We've used the Saaz but it was in a MB recipe and the infamous twang is in the way.

We may retry the Galena again as my brither thinks he might have put in to much.

Also he read that the Beta Acids can impart a bad flavor any body know about that?

So, if I'm doing a 5 gallon extract of Blonde and Light LME..... Citra hops? I'm only thinking of dry hopping, so how much would I use?

A thought crossed my mind here on my lunch break at work. If you are only adding a battering addition to a beer, it wouldn't really matter what hops you use, since you don't really taste the flavor, just the bitterness, right? If this is the case, then using a small amount of high alpha hops would be more cost effective than a larger amount of low alpha hops. I'm always up for saving money!

philm00x wrote:A thought crossed my mind here on my lunch break at work. If you are only adding a battering addition to a beer, it wouldn't really matter what hops you use, since you don't really taste the flavor, just the bitterness, right? If this is the case, then using a small amount of high alpha hops would be more cost effective than a larger amount of low alpha hops. I'm always up for saving money!

I am glad you asked this!

Because I often see people using certain hops for bittering and wonder how they picked what hop to use.

Why 60 minutes boil with 1 oz a low AA hop when you could pick a hop that achieves the same IBU with .5 oz?

jpsherman wrote:

philm00x wrote:A thought crossed my mind here on my lunch break at work. If you are only adding a battering addition to a beer, it wouldn't really matter what hops you use, since you don't really taste the flavor, just the bitterness, right? If this is the case, then using a small amount of high alpha hops would be more cost effective than a larger amount of low alpha hops. I'm always up for saving money!

I am glad you asked this!

Because I often see people using certain hops for bittering and wonder how they picked what hop to use.

Why 60 minutes boil with 1 oz a low AA hop when you could pick a hop that achieves the same IBU with .5 oz?

Well... IBUs != IBUs. Some are harsher then others it seems. Same perceived bitterness, but there *is* a flavor component and/or a level of "bite" to it too. Beers bittered with lower AA hops seem smoother/less "bitey" then beers bittered with high AA hops early in the boil. Some bittering hops leave a woody or other flavor component (Pride of Ringwood is a good example, it's the common tastes in the Coopers Mr. Beer HMEs, and it's used as a bittering hop only in most of them).

So although you don't get much flavor from a 60 minute hop boil, you may get a tiny bit of something. It might not be the same flavor you get from an actual flavor addition, but it does change how the beer tastes, so different bittering hops do change the character of the beer in subtle ways.

Thanks Mash, that's what I get from my reading. While the texts say that bittering IBUs carry no flavor, brewers seem to find that they do, or at least they influence your flavoring hops.
Sometimes my hop decisions are based on availability. I recently tasted my latest Centennial Blonde. I increased bittering hops 25%, flavoring 50%. I did want more hop, I chose those amounts because it finished the packs of hops. When I made my second SMaSH, I used Columbus because I discovered that the pack had lost it's seal. (Both of those brews were good) When I screwed up bittering (again) a saison, I used Fuggles to make hop tea to balance. It worked well. I used Fuggles only because I had plenty of them, much more than any other hop.
Good thread, BB!