Hop Subbing

Hey all,

I'm trying to get my marbles together here with brewing.

I want to jump to all grain, since it's easiest, and a hell of a lot cheaper to buy grains in Japan than extracts, and get a few good yeast strains here (with and without importing) and just buy a bunch of hops stateside.

I was going to order about 4 or 5 pounds from HopsDirect, order about 4 or 5 pounds of hops, and use them throughout the year.

Now, my question is, on any given recipe I find, if I calculate my hop addition and reach the target IBU, I should be pretty good, just a different flavor, no? It seems like a simple question, but I want to make sure I cover all the steps on this.

Additionally, my preferred beers are: barley wine, Scottish Wee Heavy, IPA, IIPA and stouts. I'll switch to wheat beers during the summer. What 5 hops would people recommend from HopsDirect to cover this spectrum?

As always, thanks!

Well, yes and no. I mean, the bittering IBUs will be correct, but the flavor will be affected in some beers.

for example, if you're making a beer that is bold and citrusy (like an American IPA) and you use all German hops, it'll taste "weird".

What I do when I order by the pound is think of my favorite beer styles and recipes and order the hops I'll use in them. So, for Belgians maybe I'd buy Styrian goldings. For English ales, East Kent Goldings. For american APAs/IPAs, cascades.

Since you like some malty beers with little hops flavor, you could try a bittering hop like magnum, since that will work with all of your favorites for bittering. Even a stout can be bittered with magnum, since it's only added at bittering. But an IPA can utitilize magnum for bittering, too, and then the cascades (or centennial, or amarillo, etc) can be used for flavor and aroma hops.

So, my suggestions:
1. Magnum (bittering for most styles, as it's pretty neutral)
2. Cascade or Amarillo or Centennial (for IPAs/APAs/Ambers/American Stouts)
3. East Kent Goldings (Irish beers, English beers, stouts)
4. Tettnanger, or hallertauer or saaz (German beers, some malty ales, "clean" hops flavor)
5. Another one of my #2 suggestions, depending on what you like.

Yooper,

You are awesome! You've certainly given me direction on this. It seemed a little over whelming trying to boil down all the hops (no pun intended) into only 5 that can spread across my likes.

Thanks!