What is your hop schedule philosophy?

For the sake of this conversation it prolly makes sense to talk about your hop forward beers.

FWH? Mash hop?

What do you like to bitter with, neutral...or whatevers around?

When and how do you build your flavor and aaroma? Equal or stacked additions of different hops, ect?


For me(right now) I'm using a combination of FWH and a neutral bittering to achive my IBU's then hopbursting from 15-0. I have been using a standard ratio for each beer with all my hopbursting. IE 2 parts simcoe, 1 part nelson sauvin, 1 part citra for each of my additions between 15 and 0. Obviously the ratio and hops used for each beer changes but for now this is my hopbursting formula. I havent started playing with whirpool additions but thats one of my next hopping frontiers.


I would be interested to here from people that are big proponents of "stacking"

IE citra at 15, cascade at 10, centennial at 5, ect.

Light on the first kettle addition. I prefer a weak bittering addition with a high alpha hop vs. a ton of FWH or some combo of Bitter/FWH. I tend to use 90% or more of my hops late for my hoppy beers.

Perhaps a middle charge (30/20) if the recipe would benefit from it.

Heavy on late additions, (15/10 to a lesser extent) particularly a long warm aroma whirlpool steep and obviously dryhops... with pellets of course for a multitude of reasons.

As long as your bitterness is on point, I find that the dryhop tends to dominate the beer's character... followed by the warm aroma steep.

You could honestly skip 30-20-15-10-5 min. additions and still have a great beer with tons of hop flavor/aroma. I sometimes use these addition points to bump up IBUs or to achieve a rounder bitterness, but I don't find them to be particularly beneficial in terms of offering the ultimate, intoxicatingly aromatic, hop character. Too much of the good stuff gets boiled off. In the same respect, you have to be careful about pounding out the beer w/a ton of late fruity hops because this can make it taste more like fruity hop juice than actual beer.

It's a delicate balance to find just enough bitterness for your palate, malt complexity, hop character, and drinkability.

For hoppy American ales, I find the most benefit in a simple 60/10/0/DH schedule to be honest. The continuous hopping method is a sham IMO... especially if you're adding something like .13 oz. of highly valued hops like an Amarillo/Citra/Simcoe blend during every 5 minutes of the boil for an hour.

Ah dry hopping, can't believe I forgot that. That could be a whole other discussion.

I usually go for 3-5 ounces for 10 days.

bobbrews said:

You could honestly skip 30-20-15-10-5 min. additions and still have a great beer with tons of hop flavor/aroma. I sometimes use these addition points to bump up IBUs or to achieve a rounder bitterness, but I don't find them to be particularly beneficial in terms of offering the ultimate, intoxicatingly aromatic, hop character. Too much of the good stuff gets boiled off. In the same respect, you have to be careful about pounding out the beer w/a ton of late fruity hops because this can make it taste more like fruity hop juice than actual beer.

It's a delicate balance to find just enough bitterness for your palate, malt complexity, hop character, and drinkability.

For hoppy American ales, I find the most benefit in a simple 60/10/0/DH schedule to be honest. The continuous hopping method is a sham IMO... especially if you're adding something like .13 oz. of highly valued hops like an Amarillo/Citra/Simcoe blend during every 5 minutes of the boil for an hour.

Click to expand...

I like hop juice beers. I have a recipes that does 30-20-10-1, but most of my recipes are 60-15-1 with dry hopping.

Fruity hop juice beers that are riddled with tropical Citra or fruity Amarillo against a clean grist & fruity yeast profile can be quite tasty, but not all the time. Sometimes I want something piney and dank...like Pliny, or a less caramelly Stone IPA.

And if you want something with a little more malt backbone, that intense fruitiness can really get in the way. Same goes for when you're trying to find a good mix of citrus, fruit, pine, herb, caramel, bread, etc. and instead, all you get is a one note tropical fruit explosion. Gets old.

For my hoppy brews I do a 60 minute addition, maybe a 15 if I want more bitterness and some flavor, and always add the bulk of my flavor/aroma hops after flameout, cooling the wort to ~175 and steeping for 30 minutes. I then dryhop with at least an ounce, usually 2-3, for 5 gallons. I get great results and look forward to experimenting more. FWH is next for me, haven't tried it yet!

Since most the hops I like are the floral citrusy high alpha types I usually do 15 mins and up with a dry hop. That's for APA and IPA style beers.

bobbrews said:

Fruity hop juice beers that are riddled with tropical Citra or fruity Amarillo against a clean grist & fruity yeast profile can be quite tasty, but not all the time. Sometimes I want something piney and dank...like Pliny, or a less caramelly Stone IPA.

And if you want something with a little more malt backbone, that intense fruitiness can really get in the way. Same goes for when you're trying to find a good mix of citrus, fruit, pine, herb, caramel, bread, etc. and instead, all you get is a one note tropical fruit explosion. Gets old.

Click to expand...

Agreed, I really like to offset tropical fruit with piney dankness. I do like tropical fruit explosions from time to time but a balance between fruit and pine is what I like more frequently.

I try to get 50% of my IBUs in the last 30 minutes. Usual schedule will be 60, 20, 15, 5, 0. Steep the flameout additions for 25 minutes @ 150-160 degrees. dry hop for 10 days with 3-4 ounces. HOP HEAVEN!

MY IPA's 80-90 ibu's

Bittering: high AA% (i.e. Columbus, bravo, apollo). I use high AA% hops, in small amounts, at 60 mins because I use a lot of hops at the end of the boil.

Flavor: any AA%. I usually start the flavor additions at 20, then go down to 10, and/or 5 mins. These hops suck up at least a 1/2 gallon of my wort

Aroma: low-to-high AA% I usually add flameout additions that steep for a small time. After Primary, I dry hop with anything that smells good to me. I've gotten great results with an apollo/bravo dry hop, it smelled floral and like orange. Cascade/columbus/bravo too.

To those who call 20-10 min. (or more loosely 25-5 min.) "The Flavor" addition, does that mean if you avoid adding hops at these times, that your beer will have little to no hop flavor?

bobbrews said:

To those who call 20-10 min. (or more loosely 25-5 min.) "The Flavor" addition, does that mean if you avoid adding hops at these times, that your beer will have little to no hop flavor?

Click to expand...

It my understanding that calling it a "flavor" addition just means that it will only contribute flavor and little bitterness because the aroma compounds will be boiled off. Aroma additions (later than 10-15 minutes) will still contribute flavor.

I usually go with a hop schedule of
60m
15m
5m
2m
dry hop one week
I feel hops between 60m and 20m are kind of a waste if you are doing a 60m boil.

Sometimes the hops are alternated in the last additions and sometimes they are half and half,(
Amarillo
Simcoe
Amarillo
or
Amarillo/Simcoe
Amarillo/Simcoe
Amarillo/Simcoe

nukebrewer said:

It my understanding that calling it a "flavor" addition just means that it will only contribute flavor and little bitterness because the aroma compounds will be boiled off. Aroma additions (later than 10-15 minutes) will still contribute flavor.

Click to expand...

I know what it is intended to describe. I've seen all of those nicely categorized graphs that try to break it down for you so easily in a simple order that you can understand. But it doesn't work that way.

Flavor and aroma are synonymous when you're discussing hop character. I like to reword it like Einstein's Spacetime, or in this case Flavoraroma. You can't taste if you don't smell. And the best aroma is had with very very late boil and dryhop additions. You can still sense the flavoraroma imparted by the hops at 15 minutes left in the boil, but it won't be as strong as it will at 5 or 0 minutes... you'll just more bitterness from the extra 10-15 minutes of boiling at the expense of less flavoraroma.

If you're discussing hop bitterness however, well then that's usually about a very general no frills kind of bitter flavor, and not orangey- grapefruity-piney flavors and aromas per se.

"Flavor" does not peak at 15/10 minutes left in the boil. Rather, the later you add your hops, the more flavoraroma you will get from them. Dryhopping gives you tons of hop flavor. Add a bunch of Citra dryhop to an otherwise very piney base recipe, and you'll have a pineapple, mango, lychee bomb of a beer on your hands.

3/4 oz @ 60
2 oz. @ 10
3 oz @ warm aroma steep
3 oz. @ dryhop

...will be more flavorful and aromatic in terms of hop character than...

1.5 oz. @ 60
1.5 oz. @ 20
1.5 oz. @ 15
1 oz. @ 10
1 oz. @ 5
1 oz. @ flameout
2 oz. @ dryhop

Only late hop additions...I get to use more hops this way. I haven't had an addition outside of 30 minutes for a while now and I really like the results.

I forgot to say what mine was. With a few exceptions (experimenting with FWH) my schedule for hop forward beers has been a small high alpha charge at 60 and something along the lines of 1 oz each at 15-10-5-0 followed by dry hopping with anywhere from 1-3 oz for 7-10 days. Today for the first time I am doing pure hop bursting for the boil hops. 2 oz at 15 then 1 oz each a 10-5-0. It will also be dry hopped with 2 oz for 7-10 days. In this case it's a high alpha hop so I don't need to deviate from my normal schedule too much except, of course, for the not having a bittering addition.

I've just started messing around with FWH, but my schedule is generally a smaller dose of high alpha at boil or FWH for about 50% of my IBU load, then a much larger charge at 10 minutes, then an equal charge at flameout with a steeping period. The exact quantities depend on the heft of beer I'm making. Then, 2-4 oz for dry hop. I recently made jake keeler's BIAB CDA recipe wherein he blended 3 hop varieties equally and used that blend for each addition. It created a really complex layered hop profile and I thought it was really inspiring, so I've been experimenting with that more.

I just did a Cascade American wheat with
2oz 15m
2oz 10m
2oz 5m
2oz flameout
let sit 45m before starting cooling.

If it turns out I think I will do more hop bursting in the future since I like hop flavor but am not really a fan of the high IBU beers.

For a "standard" not that hoppy beer I either just do a bittering addition or a 60-15-5 addition that isn't too over the top. For hoppy beers I like to do a 60-15-5-0 schedule, but really piling on the flameout hops. Something like a DIPA I add in a 30 minute addition to round it out. I tend to use 8 oz of hops in an IPA, with at least 7 of those ounces in the last fifteen minutes. Dry hops are anywhere between 1 and 5 oz.

I dont like my beer too bitter, so I start my additions at 30 min. I accidently bought some Calypso and found it to be a superb bittering hop, smooth and not too harsh. I use a Hopback and add some hot wort to start breaking down the pellets that I place in a hop bag inside the hop back. after my whirlpool, the last pass goes thru the Hop back and into the fermenter. When i keg , i put an ounce, usually cascade, centennial, or amarillo into a new nylon stocking and and let it drop to the bottom of the keg. There it sits until the keg is done.

I'm still working on my philosophy. But, I'm thinking that I'm going to drop 15 min additions, and just do 60 and then 10 minutes on down. I've never done FWH. I think a big dry hop is vital for aroma and flavor in an IPA. I brewed with this hop schedule a couple weeks ago, can't wait to taste it.

1 oz Columbus, 1 oz Nugget @ 60
.5 oz Columbus @ 15
1 oz Casacade @ 10
1 oz Columbus @ 5
1.5 oz Columbus and 1 oz Cascade @ Flame-out (Steep 20 minutes)
2 oz Dry Hop Columbus 12 days
2 oz Dry Hop Cascade 12 days

I've found that my IPAs lack the bitterness I want, so I went hard with the 60 min. Beersmith will be calculating 100 IBU, and I'm saying "No way," when I drink the final beers. Maybe it's because I'm using a nylon bag, maybe my boil isn't vigorous enough. Next IPA all hops are just going right into the boil and the boil shall be strong.