BuzzCraft

Recipes 

So I've got a batch of a Celebration Ale clone (Dean Larson's recipe) that is really fruity/estery and lacks the bitterness and hop punch of Celebration. There's probably about 1/4 of the keg left and I'm thinking of experimenting.

I've never made hop tea, but I'm thinking of boiling some Chinook with 16 oz of the beer itself to gain some bitterness and then steeping some Centennial and Cascade in the same, straining in a french press as others have described and adding to the keg.

The reason I'm thinking about doing this versus boiling/steeping in water is to utilize the lower pH of the beer to avoid tannin extraction from the hops.

Make sense? On one hand it seems like boiling the beer could potentially have a heinous tasting result, but on the other, that's how the beer started, right?

Clonefarmer

Recipes 

Boiling beer doesn't smell bad. It's what I use to cook shrimp. I don't know how it would be with hops though. You could make a small batch of wort with extract to boil the hops in.

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goose1873

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I would drink the rest of the keg and start over...

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BuzzCraft

Recipes 

i just don't want to add any sugar to it, since it's not going to ferment.

BuzzCraft

Recipes 

always an option! and not a bad one, cause the beer tastes reasonable (most people like it quite a bit, i'm just a bit critical of my own stuff). the reason i want to try this is so, if it works, i'll have a go to option if i end up in the same boat in the future. and i'll have experimented on a small batch and not f'd up a whole keg if the process tanks!

Clonefarmer

Recipes 

Ah, good call. You could ferment out the wort prior to adding.

I guess the best way to test the method you have in mind is to go ahead and boil a small amount of beer and hops and see what happens.

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"Just remember Scooty Puff Jr. sucks!"....Philip J. Fry

Gregscsu

Recipes 

all the alcohol will be boiled out of the beer you boil with the hops, increasing the FG, and body of the beer, while lowering the alcohol content. These changes would increase the sweetness of the beer, in turn lowering the percieved bitterness.

I think this would cause the entire recipe to become unbalanced, and give you a even less desirable beer then you already have.

l1ranger

Recipes 

just finish what you have and next time adjust the recipe to accentuate the bitterness that you are looking for.

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Josh

bottle - some odds and ends
Primary - Belgian Pale
Secondary - smoked ale, christmas ale
on deck - brrrrr-ley wine

goose1873

Recipes 

OP - FYI - I don't know if you are brewing full boils but if you are boiling 1/2 boils w/ extract be sure to only add half the extract and bring to boil then you will be hopping the same as the final gravity and wont need to add hops to get the same ibu's. add the other half in the last 10 minutes...I did this with great results before I moved to AG full boils.

cheers

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You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
----Frank Zappa

david_42

Recipes 

Tannins in hops? Where did you get that idea?

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