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daveooph131

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I am really new to brewing, but was wondering how you create a hop schedule? I would like to start trying to experiment or some what create a recipe. But I am not sure how one would go about figuring how much hops to put in at what times during the boil....
 
The first thing to understand is how hops are utilized during the boil. In short, the longer the hops boil, the more bitterness they will produce and the less flavor and aroma they will produce. There are typically three schedule parameters:

Bittering addition- typically added when 60 or more minutes are left on the boil
Flavor addition- 15-30 minutes left on the boil
Aroma addition- 0-10 minutes left on the boil

The bulk of IBUs almost always come from the bittering addition. The flavor addition is primarily concerned with flavor and the IBUs contributed are merely consequential. The aroma addition is concerned with adding hop aroma and IBUs are nil.

So, to sum this up:

Bittering addition- primary concern = IBUs (but some flavor does carry through)
Flavor addition- primary concern = hop flavor, but IBUs added are significant and should be considered
Aroma addition- primary concern is hop aroma, but flavor can be contributed depending on when it's added.

Typically, the bulk of hops is added for the bittering addition, with a proportion less for flavor, and usually even less for aroma, but none of this is black and white. A good place to start is to understand what you want from the beer hop-wise. Style guidelines can be helpful here. Each style of beer has typical hop characteristics which indirectly help determine the hops quantity and schedule.

Some beer styles can have more hop additions than listed above (e.g., IPA). Others can have only the bittering addition (e.g., Helles). A good read for this would be Ray Daniels' Designing Great Beers. This can help you understand the proportion of hops for various styles.
 
Start with your aroma hops and work your way back towards the beginning of the boil. That way when you get to your bitterness addition you can account for the small but real amounts of bitterness you got from the aroma/flavor additions.

Similar thing with aroma/flavor. When you get to your flavor addition you'll already know how much flavor you're getting from the aroma hops.
 
A brewing software such as BeerSmith or ProMash will do the calculations for you based on the length of boil. Just make sure to enter the correct alpha acid % for each hop. I don't know about ProMash, but BeerSmith makes the process even easier by selecting the style you are brewing and telling you the IBU parameters of the style.
 
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