More First Wort Hopping (FWH) Methods

I just found this on Palmer's site:

"Only low alpha finishing hops should be used for FWH, and the amount should be no less than 30% of the total amount of hops used in the boil. This FWH addition therefore should be taken from the hops intended for finishing additions. Because more hops are in the wort longer during the boil, the total bitterness of the beer in increased but not by a substantial amount due to being low in alpha acid. "

OK, for one who moves the bittering addition to FWH, I don't know if I agree. I do use a high alpha hop for FWH, albeit one with flavor and aroma characteristics. I haven't done a blind taste test, but I doubt Palmer has either.

There are so many myths in brewing that keep getting broken. Is this one? What do you all think?

Rich

RichBenn said:

OK, for one who moves the bittering addition to FWH, I don't know if I agree.

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Who moves the bittering additions to FWH?

1. The German breweries who pioneered the practice.
2. The breweries who produced the beers for the FWH study that Fix introduced to the home brewing community?

Should I go on?

Clearly an area worthy of research ... I would think that your high alpha hops with flavor/aroma (e.g. Centennial) would be good candidates for FWH, Palmer's advice notwithstanding. I'd think that moving these to FWH would do less to bump up overall IBU than moving late-addition hops, because the increase in boil time is less.

Dos_Locos_Brewery said:

Clearly an area worthy of research ... I would think that your high alpha hops with flavor/aroma (e.g. Centennial) would be good candidates for FWH, Palmer's advice notwithstanding. I'd think that moving these to FWH would do less to bump up overall IBU than moving late-addition hops, because the increase in boil time is less.

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LOL, it was Centennial FWH in my last batch!

There are so many experiments that could lend light on this. But it's hard(or rather, expensive, I should say) to do a statistically significant experiment. I tend to, like most brewers, use the "that tastes great, must have worked" methodology.

Rich

Agreed - scientific methods are a must in my work, but who wants to do that with a hobby? OK, I haven't done a FWH brew in a long time - I guess that's next, unless my LHBS is out of Centennial...

You can FWH with ANY hop you like the flavor of. I've FWH with everything from 2% Strisselspalt to 18% Columbus. I use what I would consider to be the flavor addition and leave the bittering addition as is, unless I'm doing something like an all FWH beer.

Denny said:

You can FWH with ANY hop you like the flavor of. I've FWH with everything from 2% Strisselspalt to 18% Columbus. I use what I would consider to be the flavor addition and leave the bittering addition as is, unless I'm doing something like an all FWH beer.

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Denny,

Do you use 100% of the flavoring addition? For example, if the normal recipe is 1 oz. at 20 minutes, do you move 1 oz. to FWH?

Rich

When I FWH I use anything that is going to give me a wonderful flavor.... so staying with low alpha acid hops is NOT going to happen...

For bittering I still stick with Magnum for a base level bitterness.

Seems to me that FWH has it's own bitterness/flavor/aroma profile just like any other other addition does. So it seems to me that you can use FWH whenever and however it yields the profile you want, just like the other additions. Of course, you have to account for it's contribution to the overall hop bitterness/flavor/aroma profile, just like you do for the other additions.

IOW, anything goes if gets you where you want.

RichBenn said:

Denny,

Do you use 100% of the flavoring addition? For example, if the normal recipe is 1 oz. at 20 minutes, do you move 1 oz. to FWH?

Rich

Click to expand...

Yep, Rich, that's exactly what I do. In my own recipes, I start by deciding how much hop flavor I want and assign an amount of hops to that. Then, I look at how much bitterness I get from that, assuming it to be equal to a 20 min. addition. Then I figure the amount of 60 min. hops to use based on that.

I've simply been using a portion of the bittering hops as FWH and dialing back a little on the later additions. Now this has been with British bitters, so the bittering hop in question was EKG at around 4-5 AA.

This seems to really add a rich mid range hop flavor. I can't say for sure without some of the scientific testing, but I think the flavor derived from the FWH addition is not as up front as a 15-20 minuet addition, but adds a lot of subtle background.

Definitely needs to be explored more.