Fwh?

Any benefits in First wort hopping ?

Yes. You will get more hop flavor out of your bittering hops. You will also get a smoother less harsh bitterness.

IMO bitterness is less harsh.

would you recomend doing this on all beers?

if you want better hop character from your bittering hops, yes

thank you

Yeah, I do a FWH in almost everything I brew.

mc_eric said:

Yeah, I do a FWH in almost everything I brew.

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Same here.

mc_eric said:

Yeah, I do a FWH in almost everything I brew.

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Me too. I make a ton of APAs and IPAs and ambers, and FWH all of them.

Yooper said:

Me too. I make a ton of APAs and IPAs and ambers, and FWH all of them.

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Yooper, do you have a 60 minute addition also? Or do you calculate to get the bulk of your IBUs from the FWH?

IIRC, FWH is pretty equivalent to a ~20 minute addition?

I havent been able to try my FWH yet but im definatly in the boat for doing this from now on.

AZ_IPA said:

Yooper, do you have a 60 minute addition also? Or do you calculate to get the bulk of your IBUs from the FWH?

IIRC, FWH is pretty equivalent to a ~20 minute addition?

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Welllllllll, the FLAVOR of the FWH is said to be similar to a 20 minute addition. But the IBUs are much greater than the 20 minute addition. So I calculate it as my 60 minute hops addition.

If you flavor hop,you may as well. You can just use 30% less flavoring additions,up your bitterness while refining and smoothing out your bitterness.Talk about efficiency,they must have been doing this in 2008 during the hop shortage??

Honestly have noticed any difference between FWH and early boil additions. Done some A-B beer brews where I did a FWH and compared it to a boil addition, in my case I usually boil 70 mins so I put in the hops at 70 mins, and tasted no difference. No smoother bitterness, no increase in bitterness either actually. So now I don't bother.

YMMV of course.

I've never tried it, but I hear one or the other, "it makes a huge difference!" or "it makes absolutely no difference!". I'd recommend (as I plan on getting around to eventually) doing the same beer with FWH and without, do a triangle test and make the call for yourself.

Yooper said:

Welllllllll, the FLAVOR of the FWH is said to be similar to a 20 minute addition. But the IBUs are much greater than the 20 minute addition. So I calculate it as my 60 minute hops addition.

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Ahh crap my ipa is going to be super bitter then. I thought the ibus were similar to a 20 min addition so I calculated in beersmith that way. There are way too many different opinions on this stuff!

Ok so fwh gives u smoother taste and increases the bitterness. Am I correct ?

I calculate the IBUs as though it were a 60 minute addition. I also don't change my hopping schedule either. I just add all of the 60m addition as a fwh, keep it in for the boil and add additional hops as called for by the recipe.

Than will def try that in my next pa

kpr121 said:

Ahh crap my ipa is going to be super bitter then. I thought the ibus were similar to a 20 min addition so I calculated in beersmith that way. There are way too many different opinions on this stuff!

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I think it'll be good. As homebrewers, we can't really be that exact on IBUs. I almost always shoot over, thinking that utilization won't be 100%, hops might have aged a little (I do vacseal), etc.

Brewing Better Beer says to calculate it as a 60 min addition, but understand that the IBUs might seem lower to some palates.

Beersmith has an option to change from "boil" to "first wort". I think it adds like 10% more AA's when you do.