Using certain hops for bittering

When I see people using Simcoe, Amarillo and Citra for bittering, it makes me want to cry.

Sorry...I've seen way too many recipes lately that use Simcoe especially for bittering.

/end rant

I gave a brewer from Boulevard crap the other day because I know they use a lot of Simcoe for bittering. It's a great bittering hop of course, just rare. I just made an all Citra IPA to serve at a competition. If I was making it for myself I would have bittered with something else but I wanted to be able to say it was a single hop IPA.

For most hoppy beers I bitter with the Hop Shot extract in a syringe stuff from Northern Brewer. It's not cheaper than high alpha hops these days, about the same price, but you get higher yield and less vegetal flavor.

What hops do you recommend for bittering? In my first 2 recipes so far I've used Magnum hops 13.1 AA for bittering with Cascades, Centennial or Liberty for flavor/aroma.

Jayhem said:

What hops do you recommend for bittering? In my first 2 recipes so far I've used Magnum hops 13.1 AA for bittering with Cascades, Centennial or Liberty for flavor/aroma.

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+1

I bitter with Magnum most times. However, I don't brew within style guidelines all the time either.

I have half a pound of Spalt to use up, time to start some German beers!

Why are you complainig about bittering with Amarillo and Citra? Even our own Wiki states-

Simcoe

Simcoe is a recent American cultivar released by Yakima Chief Ranches in 2000. It has a very distinct aroma of citrus, grapefruit, and pine. While Simcoe is a very popular aroma hop, it's high alpha acid % and low cohumulone content make it a very useful bittering hop as well.

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Citra

Citra is a dual-purpose hop released in 2007 by the Hop Breeding Company. It is a cross of Hallertauer Mittelfruh, U.S. Tettnanger, East Kent Golding, Bavarian, Brewers Gold, and other unknown hops. Citra has a citrus aroma and flavor, with a heavy aroma of tropical fruits (guava, mango, tropical fruit). It is typically used as an aroma hop, but due to its high alpha % and low cohumulone content, it makes an excellent bittering hop as well.

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I love when people get torqued about something enough to rant about it, when it's perfectly acceptable to do.

probably because they are somewhat hard to find - not because they don't serve well as bittering hops - although I didn't like the beers i've tried with early citra additions for bittering

I never said that I thought they were poor bittering hops (other than citra)...just that people were kicking their grandmother's off a cliff to get these things, and then bittering with them...doesn't make sense.

And yes...I use Warrior/Magnum for bittering 99.97% of the time.

No offense, but I couldn't care less if they're hard to find. If using simcoe as a bittering hop creates a great beer for me, then guess what? I'm going to keep doing it. We preach and preach and preach on this site to do certain things and take certain measures to make the best beer possible. It's somewhat hypocritical to preach that, then say, "well, we're running a little low on simcoe these days... so use something else as a bittering hop if you can... no need to waste the simcoe..." If Boulevard likes producing beers with simcoe as a bittering hop, then they have every right to.

Hell, I love hop blasting my beers to achieve the desired bitterness as this contributes to the flavor as well. If my 10-20 5 gallon batches of beer a year deplete the world of hops, I apologize.