Mash Hopping & First Wort Hopping
 

Anyone with experience with hopping your mash, or FWH'ing? What characteristics do these two techniques bring to the party, and what's the correct procedure for doing either?

Thanks!

I haven't tried it yet, but here's a link to a primer on the subject:
http://brewery.org/library/1stwort.html

I first wort nearly every beer I brew.

It gives a "deeper" hop flavor, not more hoppy mind you, a "deeper hop" taste.

Or to expain it another way...

I think it provides a more complete flavor profile that stands up better. Many times, I taste hops on the front and sides of my tongue, with a FW beer, it tends to completely coat your tongue with hoppy goodness.

I find the benefits to be greatest on beers like pils and lagers, and it did wonders for my steam lager. That one tasted so much like St Pauli Girl it was scary.

Everyones taste is different mind you but I strongly urge you to give it a try.


edit; I first wort by adding 1/2 of my boiling hops to the pot as I sparge out the first runnings. From there on add the rest of the hops as schedualed.


Cheers,

knewshound

I agree with knewshound on the FWH...I tried it on a couple of beers and really like it so far. I'll probably replace the 15-30m hop additions on my ales with FWH.

In terms of MH, I also tried that and frankly I'm not sure it did a whole lot other than make running my lauter really easy (due to the filtration characteristics).

Would this process replace using bittering hops at the beginning of the boil or mid boil additions?

Definitely does not replace bittering hops IMO. Bitter as usual. For me it replaces the 15-20m addition. Now, this is based on anecdotal information and two batches of personal experience, but so far is holding up. The Chairman is doing a bit of an experiment which should help some with some nice empirical data.

Thanks, I am going to try this with my next brew.