Hopbursting - Just Late Addition?

An experiment you could try which I found helpful was to use RO water or a bottled water like Poland Springs for a batch you are familiar with and see if changing water.

You still haven't listed any commercial examples of hoppy beers you would like to emulate.


You can buy hops on the internet for about half of what your currently paying.

Yeah water chemistry is the last 'frontier' I have yet to thoroughly explore - and if I can buy hops online for half of what I'm paying - sign me up! Please lead on sir!

I am not trying to emulate a specific commercial IPA - but I am definitely going for a blast citrus aroma/flavor. The last two IPA's I brewed which I have finally been able to try are better than the one I originally posted about; they definitely smell like acetaldehyde though - took them off the yeast too soon. However the big diff between those two IPA's and the one originally referred to is that I used 7oz of hops in each. Most of it Amarillo.

I'm guessing that the continued lack of appropriate hop flavor is a result of off flavors from inadequate temp control and not enough time on the yeast. It's ironic that the way to solve this problem involves more time on the yeast - which I believe works to diminish hop flavor as previously discussed. I think its a 4 steps forward and one step back kind of thing - you're still three steps forward.

Thanks for the post! Let me know where you get those hops!

What hops you wanna buy? I will post the cheapest I can find them. Typically this will mean purchasing by the pound( this may require freezer space for storage).

Inadequate temp control? I didn't see this in this thread. Yeah. Get this under control first. Your not gonna taste much hops if your loaded up with yeast flavors.

Time on the yeast? If your fermenting at 80*F I don't think you need more time on the yeast.

water chemistry - Water high in bicarbonate will mask hop flavors. Not a lot. But it will add to the other off-flavors that are masking your hops. It will also lead to high PH which will extract harsh tannin flavor from the grain which will also help mask hop flavor.

Yeah I had not spent enough sleepless nights drinking homebrew (not hoppy ones..... the ones that come out ok) and reading about temp control when I first posted this. I have come to the conclusion (unfortunately from firsthand exp) that acetaldehyde is a ***** and fights tooth and nail with hops for flavor supremacy. When some of my bottles were young, I could taste diacetyl - but only after the initial bitterness 'bite' and before the nice citrus finish. When the bottles finished carbing that citrus part was long gone....

My bicarbonate levels are only 67.3 mg/L so not too high.

Also I have been using Amarillo, centennial, Columbus, simcoe, cascade, citra in varying qty's for the ipa's and pales. Thanks for checking into those hops.

Amarillo is tricky to find at times the prices here are really good on the hops you mentioned.
http://www.yakimavalleyhops.com/DomesticHopPellets2012_s/1843.htm

Columbus $9.99 /LB
Simcoe $20/LB
Cascade $14/LB
Citra $22
Centennial $16

I don't know how they keep their shipping down so low? Do they temp control the hops en route? I think the flat rate from USPS is not temp controlled but I'm guessing that hasn't been an issue as you use/trust their products?

Thanks for the help. Just had a sample of the pale I did my first hop stand with on 7/5 - only a 1oz hopstand but the flavor is nice.
anyways, thanks again for the help w/ the hops.

Hops are hops. Pretty durable when vacuum sealed and probably won't degrade on the truck ride one bit. Once you cut open the package your gonna wanna seal it good and freeze it. Oxygen combined with heat will degrade hops, not overnight, but maybe over the coarse of a month you would see a difference. I haven't ordered from this particular vendor before, but I do trust most large online hop vendors.