I screwed up my hop tea.

dipflop · 05-28-2007, 04:38 AM

I brewed Northen Brewer's Double IPA tonight and I screwed up my hop tea. I added the first two hop additions into the hop tea and the last two into the wort. When i went to add the hop tea to the wort there was no tea, just wet hops (fyi i suck at explaining this). Not knowing what to do I poured a quart of water over the hops. Will I have any bitterness in this what so ever? Is there anything I can do now?

**usnsti** · 05-28-2007, 05:18 AM

RDWHAHB

I am sure it will be fine. What do you mean by hop tea? I have never heard that term before.

BarleyWater · 05-28-2007, 05:37 AM

How long were you cooking your hops with no liquid before you realized? Taste it when you take a hydro sample or transfer, you can always add more to the fermenters.

I think it should be ok, the bittering compounds were extracted by the water, but don't evaporate. So as long as you still had A LITTLE water in there, and the bittering compounds should be there still.

If you had no water left, you may have some FUNKY tasting hops on your hands due to them getting burned. Guess you'll need a little more water next time.

**Jaybird** · 05-28-2007, 05:44 AM

Just wondering... Why not add the hops to the boil??
JJ

dipflop · 05-28-2007, 05:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by usnsti

RDWHAHB

I am sure it will be fine. What do you mean by hop tea? I have never heard that term before.

A hop tea is adding the first two hop additions in boiling water rather than the wort boil. The recipe calls for a hop tea because there would be a poor hop utilization with a partial boil since there is so much malt in the recipe, 12 lb LME.

**usnsti** · 05-28-2007, 07:02 AM

ok i get it now. So I can see why you might be worried. Hopefully it turns out ok, let us know how it tastes.

homebrewer_99 · 05-28-2007, 12:21 PM

You could have added your LME at the end of the boil and just hopped as you normally would per the recipe.

Can you post the recipe?

Hop tea's are usually added after the boil to bring the bitterness up from underhopping.

I've made several hop tea's. I start off with 1/2 gal of water and it reduces over the hour so water has to be added. If you use the reduced water the hops are more concentrated, which I think is a good thing, because you are not diluting your beer with more water.

Another thing about hops is if you double up on the hops you only need to boil the water for 1/2 hour to get the same amount of bitterness extracted.

**david_42** · 05-28-2007, 02:13 PM

Either you cooked off most of the tea or you didn't have enough water to start, but since the hops were still wet, the bittering isomers were probably still dissolved. The thing to remember, the max. IBU water can hold is around 90; then you dilute it. So, unless your tea batch is large you probably won't get the bittering you wanted.

**Yuri_Rage** · 05-28-2007, 02:30 PM

Apparently a few HBS's are now selling kits that require you to make a hop tea rather than add hops to the boil. I suppose that allows them to get away with giving you less hops. What a copout.

FYI, a hop tea is a small volume of water boiled with hops, then added to the wort (or fermenting beer, depending on the application).

dipflop · 05-28-2007, 03:09 PM

Specialty Grains

* 0.75 lbs. Dingemans Caramel Pils
* 0.25 lbs. Briess Caramel 120

Fermentables

* 12 lbs. Pilsen Malt Syrup

Boil Additions

* 1 oz. Yakima Magnum (60 min)
* 1 oz. Liberty (30 min)
* 1 oz. Yakima Magnum (10 min)
* 2 oz. Northern Brewer (Leaf) (0 min)

Special Ingredients

* 1 oz. Cascade Hops (dry hop)

Yeast

* Wyeast #1332 Northwest Ale Yeast.