Idea for beer: low IBU, huge hop aroma/flavor?

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cmoon

cmoon

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OK, so I'm a pliny fan. I love the IIPAs, but I've realized mostly because I like that huge hop aroma. In fact, I get disappointed with so called DIPAs that don't hit me immediately with hop aroma/flavor. I don't mean I don't dig the bitterness too, but it isn't actually what I love about the IIPA.

Knowing that some people tolerate the more bitter beers, have there been any experiments with brewing a much lower IBU beer (like a pale ale) but then hopping it at knock out + dry hopping like a crazy IIPA (you know, 3 oz of the C hops tossed into the secondary)???

I know you guys at HBT have tried everything, fermented everything, dry hopped everything. What did you find out when you tried this?
 
It's a fairly common practice for exactly the reasons you mention :). Do a search on "hop bursting" and enjoy. (I'd give you some links myself, but I'm on the mobile client. And lazy! :mug: )
 
I recently did an IIPA which had a focus on aroma and a big malt front. We will see how it goes, still about 5-6 weeks to go. My final IBU was about 60 which is still high, but not much considering what many other IIPAs run.
 
I just finished a keg of Pale Ale with only late hop additions, 10 and 5 minute additions only, then dry hopped with 2oz for a week. It was awsome. I'm cold crashing a 2nd batch of the same thing right now. It's definitely a softer bitterness, no real up front sting like you might find on a American Pilsner is the best way I can describe it. Easy drinking and lots of hop flavor and aroma. It took me 7.5 oz to bitter 6 gallons to 35 ibus, then another 2 oz for dry hopping.

1.053 OG (malt bill is an Epic Pale Ale clone)
SRM 9
80% Golden Promise
10% Carastan
6.7% Light Carastan
3.3% CaraHell

35 IBU's (Hop combo is from Rogue Oregasmic Ale)
Willamette, Sterling, Revolution at 10 and 5 minutes
Willamette for dry hop

here's a link to Pope Jamil's Late Hopping Article
http://486286.cache1.evolutionhosting.com/attachments/0000/1249/MJzym06_LateHops.pdf
 
Ohhh yeah! I agree, but it is all about finding a hop or two that YOU like!
Personally, Columbus and Simcoe...mmm, nmmm, mmmmm.

I did an amber ale low bittering IBUs, killed it with late hops, dry hopped for a week, then I put a metal strainer ball inside a nylon hop bag and put that in the keg with the beer while it was served. WHOA, it was exactly what you are talking about!
It smelled and tasted like the hops were just sweet liquid gold!
 
I really want to try the hop bursting technique really soon. Does anyone know if Beersmith will reliably calculate IBUs from late hop additions? I think if I select "boil" in the hops tab that it will calculate IBUs whereas "aroma" will not. That seems odd though wince they truly are contributing some bitterness.
 
I've been considering this approach as well. My wife likes some IPAs, and in talking and sharing different ones with her, I've nailed down that it is the bitterness that she doesn't like.
 
I've been thinking about trying the "hopbursting" technique as well. If you are only adding hops for the last 15-20 minutes, is there any point in doing a full 60 minute boil?
 
Some bittering is needed. I used the same malt recipe for my IPA as my Sunset Gold APA,which used a cooper's OS Draught can with 3lbs of Munton's plain light DME. Nice amber orange color. I used 1.5oz each of Columbus,Nugget,& Cascade in a 25 minute boil. I added the hops in 8 min,30 second intervals for that time. Columbus>Nugget>Cascade. The Cascade was whole leaf. I dry hopped with the remaining .5oz of each for a week. The aromas at bottling time were great. I put 2 bottles in the fridge yesterday afternoon for this evening.
Nice & clear last night,chill haze is clearing already! They were in bottles 12 days as of yesterday. I know that sounds early,but the APA I based the malt profile on was ready in 11 days flat. Although better at 4 weeks.
I'll have to report back when we try them this afternoon. 5.9% too,so it's not as big as a 90min DFH IPA,but it's promising to be good. Can't wait till later to find out.
 
If you're doing extract, you could cut your boil time down. If doing AG, you'll still need to boil off the additional sparge water.
 
saluki_brewer said:
I've been thinking about trying the "hopbursting" technique as well. If you are only adding hops for the last 15-20 minutes, is there any point in doing a full 60 minute boil?
Click to expand...

I do hop-bursting a lot, and I still do my full 60 minute (or 90 minute) boil. It all depends on your technique and how you plan your brews. I have my system efficiencies calculated for my typical extraction efficiency and boil-off rate, so I can reliably calculate OG from my 60 minute boils. Then, if I include significant pilsner malt in my recipe, which I often do, I boil for 90 minutes to reduce DMS. Plus, there are plenty of things going on in the boil that you probably don't think about, like some wort caramelization, production of meladonins, etc. that contribute significantly to the flavor of your beer.

You could always plan your recipe/brew day to reduce the boil time to 30 minutes or so, but you may need to adjust several things to achieve the flavors you reliably count on.
 
My goal for about 4 years now is to make an awesome "session" IPA. I want a low OG, so that it's drinkable pint after pint, huge hops aroma and flavor, but enough malt to support it. I want just enough bitterness to make the balance not sweet.

So far, I've made some good beers but not yet hit the "Holy Grail". It's really hard to get a strong malt backbone, firm but restrained bitterness, and huge hops flavor and aroma perfectly balanced in any beer, but to do it in a lower OG beer has been my goal.

Sometimes the beers just don't have enough malt backbone for me to call them "perfect".

Overall, I find that a malt bill that has some specialty malts like Munich or Vienna, little to no crystal malt, a non-harsh bittering hop (like magnum) and lots of American hops without harsh notes provide almost exactly what I want. A very neutral ale yeast, like WLP001, fermented on the cool side of the yeast strain's optimum range seems to help the hops shine also, but I've been loving the Denny's Favorite strain from Wyeast for these beers also.
 
Like yooper, I've also been playing around with the session IPA idea. The best I've made so far was a ~55 IBU 4% ABV Marris Otter/Chinook SMaSH.

However, some of my other attempts taught me that bitterness is necessary to complement the hoppy flavors (at least to my taste). I would recommend keeping your BU:GU ratio at or above what you would for an IPA, especially when using a lot of late hops, as the Tinseth formula tends to calculate inflated IBU numbers for late additions.
 
Well,we finally tried my IPA yesterday afternoon. It was 12 days in the bottle when I put them in the fridge the day before yesterday. Color is already darker amber,carbonation is def good,fine bubbles. Head was only about 5/8",I think due to its being a bit young yet,& the film on my beer glasses. Gotta take care of that. The hop aroma is citrusy,& def easy to smell.
The flavor def needs more aging. The light toasty malt flavor is still mostly buried. But has a dark,smooth aroma as the ale warms. Grapefruit with some bitter orange in there. Lemon flavor is buried. This brew is going to need a couple weeks yet to become more rounded to where the malt & other hop flavors come out more.
But it is 5.9%,& should fit my M.O. when it finally matures. Should be easy to drink a few.
 
my recommendation would be to check out this recipe from Mike "Tasty" McDole, he's known to brew some great hoppy beers without the bitterness. His "Tasty APA" is a great example of that and I've brewed it a few times and absolutely love this beer. I've made a few small changes since I don't FWH and didn't have access to all the hops he calls for, but I bet it's pretty similar in the finished product.

http://beerdujour.com/Recipes/Tasty APA.html
 
I would do something like
6pounds pilsner
1pound vienna
1pound victory
1pound crystal10
1oz chinook at 20minutes
1oz columbus at 10minutes
1oz centential at 5minutes
1oz simcoe at flameout

1oz simcoe, 1oz columbus, 1oz centential dryhop

still falls in the in the IBU for a ipa at approx 45ibus
 
Started this thread before going on a hiking trip; came back to two pages of fantastic recommendations. Thanks guys!
 
Yooper said:
My goal for about 4 years now is to make an awesome "session" IPA. I want a low OG, so that it's drinkable pint after pint, huge hops aroma and flavor, but enough malt to support it. I want just enough bitterness to make the balance not sweet.

So far, I've made some good beers but not yet hit the "Holy Grail". It's really hard to get a strong malt backbone, firm but restrained bitterness, and huge hops flavor and aroma perfectly balanced in any beer, but to do it in a lower OG beer has been my goal.

Sometimes the beers just don't have enough malt backbone for me to call them "perfect".

Overall, I find that a malt bill that has some specialty malts like Munich or Vienna, little to no crystal malt, a non-harsh bittering hop (like magnum) and lots of American hops without harsh notes provide almost exactly what I want. A very neutral ale yeast, like WLP001, fermented on the cool side of the yeast strain's optimum range seems to help the hops shine also, but I've been loving the Denny's Favorite strain from Wyeast for these beers also.
Click to expand...

You just described pretty much exactly what I've been going for lately, and just attempted again this Saturday with fresh Cascades. I did 11 gallons of a fairly standard IPA grain bill (mostly pale malt with ~20% marris otter as the base malts), but with ~5% Vienna thrown in there for some malt complexity. 2 oz. of Falconer's Flight at 30 minutes, and then 55 oz. of fresh, just-picked Cascades steadily from 20 minutes to 0 minutes. OG of 1.052, so it should come out around 5.2 - 5.5%, depending on FG, with calculated IBUs of 50 - 60, depending on what the Cascades contributed.

And to keep the similarities coming - Denny's Favorite 50 fermenting ~68 F. I'm hopeful this will turn out to be a supremely session-able IPA.
 
This is actually fairly common practice, particularly amongst home brewers (at least those I know). Another "version" of lowering the IBU while maintaining huge hop flavor and aroma is playing with the hop addition schedule. We have a very delicious brew we call Smiling Sky Summer Pale that, while uber-hoppy in perception, has no 60 minute hop addition. Here is Smiling Sky's hop schedule (60 minute boil, 6 gal AG batch):

40 min: .6 oz Simcoe
30 min: .4 oz Simcoe
05 min: .5 oz Centennial + .5 oz Cascade
Dry hop (post-fermentation) for 4 to 5 days: .5oz Centennial + .5 oz Cascade

At 35 IBU, it's still decently bitter, but the citrusy burst of aroma when you bring a pint to your nose, followed by that classic American hop flavor is fabulous. In fact, this beer is the neighborhood favorite and we end up brewing it nearly every brew day between May and August. If you want the whole recipe, let me know and I'll be happy to share it!
 
pickles said:
I really want to try the hop bursting technique really soon. Does anyone know if Beersmith will reliably calculate IBUs from late hop additions? I think if I select "boil" in the hops tab that it will calculate IBUs whereas "aroma" will not. That seems odd though wince they truly are contributing some bitterness.
Click to expand...

It will not; however this is not a shortcoming of beersmith, it's a shortcoming of the common IBU estimation formulae. In my experience, they are not very good at estimating IBUs for large late hop additions. You will have to do some trial and error here, but start off with less calculated IBUs than you think you actually want.

My theory about this is that, IIRC, all of the formulae indicate that AA utilization goes to zero when the boil stops, but in reality, AAs are isomerized until the wort gets down below some threshold temperature (180F?). So, if it takes you 10 minutes to get down below that temperature, a 15 minute addition actually has 25 minutes worth of AA isomerization.
 
Wahoo said:
It will not; however this is not a shortcoming of beersmith, it's a shortcoming of the common IBU estimation formulae. In my experience, they are not very good at estimating IBUs for large late hop additions. You will have to do some trial and error here, but start off with less calculated IBUs than you think you actually want.

My theory about this is that, IIRC, all of the formulae indicate that AA utilization goes to zero when the boil stops, but in reality, AAs are isomerized until the wort gets down below some threshold temperature (180F?). So, if it takes you 10 minutes to get down below that temperature, a 15 minute addition actually has 25 minutes worth of AA isomerization.
Click to expand...

YMMV, but my experience (and that of most others I've talked to) has dictated the opposite. I've had one brewer say to add 10% to what you want your IBUs to be when hopbursting. (i.e. if you want 70, make your calculated IBUs 77). I would probably go even higher than that.
 
Fair enough Slowbie, but nevertheless, the IBU formulae are not terribly good at predicting the outcome of this type of hopping schedule.
 
Wahoo said:
Fair enough Slowbie, but nevertheless, the IBU formulae are not terribly good at predicting the outcome of this type of hopping schedule.
Click to expand...

This I will definitely agree with. And I should have mentioned that it does depend on which formula you use. What I said was all in reference to my experience with the Tinseth formula. Others might be on the other side.
 
I did a SMASH HOPBURST - TWO weird techniques. I added all hops with 20 minutes left in the boil. Whirlpooled some hops at 170 when chilling and dry hopped. IT's like Hop juice! If you want to get a little more bitterness, then FWH (first wort hop) a half ounce of your aroma hop and add a half pound of crystal malt! This will get you where you want to be!

Check it out here...
 
Hopbursting rocks. I did a beer where I had no bittering hops. I then overloaded with hops every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes of the boil. The hop flavor and aroma was so awesome.

This method is what makes Hopslam so good. People seem to think that Hopslam is 100+ IBUs. But, it actually is only in the high 60s. They concentrate on hop flavor more than bitterness.
 
Low IBU and huge hop aroma is the only way I roll for APAs. Keep all of the hops under 10min, and dryhop with a couple of ounces and you'll have a spectacularly fresh hop beer.
 
Anyone have a tried and true recipe for an low IBU HopBurst APA? Or can any recipe be done this way?
 
pickles said:
Anyone have a tried and true recipe for an low IBU HopBurst APA? Or can any recipe be done this way?
Click to expand...

Here's the best one I made so far (I guess it's not technically a true hopburst but it's along the same lines--plenty of hop flavors):

6 gallon batch

100% Marris Otter up to OG of ~1.040 (adjust amount based on your efficiency, 10 lbs. with 70% efficiency)

For extract just use as much extra light as it takes to get up to 1.040 for your batch size.

60 min mash @ 154F

Hops (Tinseth IBU values are in parentheses so you can adjust to your boil size):

.5 oz Chinook @ 60 min (16.3)
1.5 oz Chinook @ 15 min (24.3)
1 oz Chinook @ 10 min (11.8)
1 oz Chinook @ 0 min
 
shanecb said:
Low IBU and huge hop aroma is the only way I roll for APAs. Keep all of the hops under 10min, and dryhop with a couple of ounces and you'll have a spectacularly fresh hop beer.
Click to expand...

Same here man. I just did a hopburst myself, the Kansas Summer Ale in my signature. I do like hop flavor, but when the IBUs get to be above 40, it becomes less digestible, and less easy drinking. If you're taking a sip, and you have to pause quite a few seconds before you can take another due to bitterness, alcohol flavors, or viscosity, then you're not making a very digestible beer IMO.
 
shanecb said:
Low IBU and huge hop aroma is the only way I roll for APAs. Keep all of the hops under 10min, and dryhop with a couple of ounces and you'll have a spectacularly fresh hop beer.
Click to expand...

Under 10 minutes? What does that get your IBUs to? That seems like it wouldn't even be high enough for an APA. I did a 10 gallon IPA with 1 oz every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes and that put the IBUs in the 60s. That was my goal.
 
Mavtech said:
Under 10 minutes? What does that get your IBUs to? That seems like it wouldn't even be high enough for an APA. I did a 10 gallon IPA with 1 oz every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes and that put the IBUs in the 60s. That was my goal.
Click to expand...

Yeah, under 10 minutes seems crazy. I just did an IPA with all additions under 30 minutes. I think I was about 90 IBU. It was a lot of hop mass...used Cascade and Chinook exclusively.
 
Mavtech said:
Under 10 minutes? What does that get your IBUs to? That seems like it wouldn't even be high enough for an APA. I did a 10 gallon IPA with 1 oz every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes and that put the IBUs in the 60s. That was my goal.
Click to expand...

I use a lot of high alpha varieties, and a lot of hops. More hops go into my APA than I see some people put into their IPAs. Here's the last hopping schedule I did for an APA:

1oz Chinook, 1oz Citra, and 1oz Simcoe at 10min
1oz Chinook, 1oz Citra, and 1oz Simcoe at flameout
1oz Chinook and 1oz Simcoe for dryhop

Racks up a healthy 45 calculated IBUs, which is actually the high range for an APA. It was an AWESOME beer. So I guess actually, now that I'm looking, the IBUs weren't as low as I thought. But if you just switched out one of the varieties for Cascade or something you could knock 10 or 15 IBUs off.
 
shanecb said:
I use a lot of high alpha varieties, and a lot of hops. More hops go into my APA than I see some people put into their IPAs. Here's the last hopping schedule I did for an APA:

1oz Chinook, 1oz Citra, and 1oz Simcoe at 10min
1oz Chinook, 1oz Citra, and 1oz Simcoe at flameout
1oz Chinook and 1oz Simcoe for dryhop

Racks up a healthy 45 calculated IBUs, which is actually the high range for an APA. It was an AWESOME beer. So I guess actually, now that I'm looking, the IBUs weren't as low as I thought. But if you just switched out one of the varieties for Cascade or something you could knock 10 or 15 IBUs off.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a yummy hop schedule. I need to get some Citra. I haven't brewed with that one yet.

IMO, that's a bit of a waste at Flameout. I would do .5 of each. That is, unless this is a 10 gallon batch.
 
shanecb said:
I use a lot of high alpha varieties, and a lot of hops. More hops go into my APA than I see some people put into their IPAs. Here's the last hopping schedule I did for an APA:

1oz Chinook, 1oz Citra, and 1oz Simcoe at 10min
1oz Chinook, 1oz Citra, and 1oz Simcoe at flameout
1oz Chinook and 1oz Simcoe for dryhop

Racks up a healthy 45 calculated IBUs, which is actually the high range for an APA. It was an AWESOME beer. So I guess actually, now that I'm looking, the IBUs weren't as low as I thought. But if you just switched out one of the varieties for Cascade or something you could knock 10 or 15 IBUs off.
Click to expand...

What was the grain bill for this? The hop schedule seems in order with huge hop aroma goal of the OP.
 
Lots of good info covered in this thread. I only did one hop bursted beer and it was a clone of DFH 60 Min IPA (Yooper's recipe?) Technically you could brew that one and cut back on the bittering hops by half and end up with a nice brew.

I might suggest if your really looking for a lower gravity highly hopped beer you dont have to go the IPA route, try 3 Floyd's Gumball head. Its a highly hopped wheat brew about 5.5% with 4 oz of Amarillo ( for 5G ) no hop bursting, just early, late and dry additions. This is a great hoppy session brew, I'm going to brew a clone of it this weekend.
 
1 double ipa i truly love is the hop rising from squatters, its literally exploding with hop flavor and aroma, while remaining less bitter than most normal pale ales I've had, its also dangerously drinkable at 9 % abv
 
I've been wanting to try a batch of hoppy but low bitterness beer myself. I like what I'm seeing in this thread so far but I also heard a rumor that you can get a smoother bitterness by adding hops to your wort as it drains from your mashtun. I guess the theory is that the temperature of your mash dissolves the alpha acids and then the time it takes to bring the wort to a boil plus the 60 min. boil time breaks down the higher bitter notes of the hops.

Like I said, this is just a rumor I heard. Haven't had the time to test it myself but was wondering if anyone else has.
 

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