Hopping up an IPA

I currently have an IPA in the primary. The guy at my home brew shop recommended keeping out some of the hops and doing a hop tea later. Of course I promplty forgot everything he told me about how to do it. When should I add it to the beer?

Hops!

Any time. Heck I'd even chew one while drinking the beer if it needed it.

Hop tea is soaking the hops and using the water.

Some people boil and strain, some people just dump the hops and boil in.
Some people don't even boil.

You can stick them in Primary, Secondary or the bottle.

Even in store bought beer!

Hops Rock.:rockin:

When people talk about hoppy ales, they are almost always thinking about the hop aroma. Hop aroma is easily increased by dry hopping in the clearing tank. My Bent Rod Rye got dry hopped three times: Cascades, Fuggles and EKG. All you do is put the hops in the tank for a week.

But maybe there is something wrong with your IPA. Not enough bittering to balance the alcohol level can be treated by boiling hops in water for 60 minutes and adding it. You can increase hop flavor the same way with a 15 or 20 minute boil.

[Some people think I don't like hoppy ales, just because I don't make them very often. My local has two IPA's, a very hoppy APA, and a hoppy Red on tap. Mark made a Pilsner last summer that had so much Saaz in it, I thought he had used Cascades! Any club event I go to, hoppy ales will be 75% of what's offered. So, I make other stuff.]

orfy said:

Hops!

Any time. Heck I'd even chew one while drinking the beer if it needed it.

Hop tea is soaking the hops and using the water.

Some people boil and strain, some people just dump the hops and boil in.
Some people don't even boil.

You can stick them in Primary, Secondary or the bottle.

Even in store bought beer!

Hops Rock.:rockin:

Click to expand...

There's a big difference between soaking and boiling the hops. Soaking them extracts the hop flavors and aromas, but adds no discernible bitterness to the beer. Boiling hops, however (which is what is referred to as a hop tea) extracts the alpha acids, which add bitterness as well as aromas and flavors. This is the main reason that you boil your brew for 60+ minutes...to extract the bitterness from the hops.

I use ProMash, so I dial in my bitterness before I ever do the main boil. As such, I've never needed to supplement my bitterness level after the fact. However, I do dry-hop quite a bit. In fact, my IPA is currently in the secondary vessel with 2 ounces of whole cascade.

My advice is to take a test sample, and taste it. If it's not bitter enough, then you can do a real "hop tea", by boiling the hops in water for 15-30 minutes, or more. If it's bitter enough, but you just want to increase the hop flavors and aromas, just stuff a couple of ounces of pellets or whole hops into the secondary vessel and let them do their thing for a couple of weeks.

Ugg, seeing as hops boiling while brewing makes me nautious I can not imagine what "hop tea" would do. Gross.