Hop Tea for Bittering... Advice?

day_trippr said:

Boil an ounce of magnum in a six cups of water for 40 minutes. That'll drive out any aroma and nearly all of the flavor characters (and magnum being fairly neutral there shouldn't be much left but bitterness).

You should be left with about a quart of extract. Quietly pour a quarter of the extract into your batch, stir gently, and taste a sample. Add more extract if desired...

Cheers!

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jsmit209 said:

I made a Vanilla-Hazelnut Brown Ale recently. I over did the flavoring, and now it tastes syrup-y sweet. I boiled two whole vanilla beans (halved) and used 2oz of hazelnut extract flavoring. I cooled that mixture and added it directly to the secondary fermenter at kegging time.

I would like to add some bitterness to off-set the overly sweet flavor. I've heard that making a "hop tea" with some high AA hops could accomplish this. However, I have no idea on hop quantity, type (pellet, leaf, etc.), water volume, or boil time. I don't want significant hop aromas, just to cut the sweetness. Any recommendations on hop type or procedure? I will use a french press to eliminate any residue.

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helibrewer said:

I have found that vanilla and flavor extracts diminish with time, you may not want to do anything to it. Or as a test, bottle some off to age and treat the rest.

You could keep some of this on hand for future use: Hop Extract

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jsmit209 said:

Would you recommend using a french press to prevent any residue from entering the kegged beer? Will the volume loss be due to evaporation during the boil?

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day_trippr said:

Press, filter paper, fine mesh strainer - whatever you want to work with will be fine as long as it's clean and sanitized. If a few bits of hop find their way into the keg it won't be the end of the world

It's been awhile since I did this myself (must be five years back now, when I brewed a rather insipid wheat beer that came to life with another 20 IBUs) but as I recall I did boil off around two cups of water in ~40 minutes, hence starting with 6 cups to end with around a quart to work with.

You don't want to brew up a lot of water as you'll be watering down your beer while trying to boost the IBUs; otoh, if you start with too little water the extract rate will suffer, and you may end up with stew instead of tea

Cheers!

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jsmit209 said:

I boiled 6 cups with the ounce of Magnum, but with around 15 minutes left, almost all the water had boiled off... very strange to lose that much water.

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