hop teas for bittering, flavor?

Is anyone separating their wort boil from their hops boil?

I'm thinking of trying to do the two separately. Right now I have a bit of trouble dialing in my boils to know exactly how much I'll cook off in 60 or 90 minutes, so my results can vary a lot, like last night's doppelbock not boiling off enough so my OG could have been higher, and I tossed the excess wort. I've gone back and forth with this, and sometimes cook it down too much (though I can add distilled water).

My idea is that I can boil a hop tea following the hopping schedule in a smaller amount of water, then strain it through a sanitized sack or strainer and use the tea to add after the boil is done on the wort. Then I can boil my wort to a volume, rather than a time, keeping in mind I'll do 90 minutes at minimum for a pilsner malt.

The problem is that you get much better hop utilization with both the wort and the volume of your boil. If you do a hop tea you are likely not to use a large boil and won't get anywhere the utilization you need...unless you feel like investing a lot money in hops.

That's a good point. I'll have to work a simple pale ale recipe both ways with hops from the same packages and compare to see what happens.

It's an unlikely thing, but I wonder what a pressure canner would do to a hop boil.

Isn't that for aroma or flavor rather than bitterness? Just listened to that the other day through a podcast.

If you do that you will waste money in hops to get the same IBU as you would on the normal boil... If you figure out your evap rate you can run a 90 or 120min boil and boil the hops starting with 60 min less or whichever spot you want to start at.

yeah, but my evaporation rate is highly variable and I cannot get a handle on it. I'm building a new rig to brew on, so hopefully that will be a little more predictable, but I thought a batch or two of testing might show something else that was possible.

I've done 60 min hop teas in 1 gal of water for bitterness without any problems.

At 30 mins you get the flavoring and some bittering...under 15 mins you'll get aroma. It's simple really.

All of these work. What is relevant is the amount of water you end up with (the concentration).

You need to add it slowly to a wort so you don't overdo it.

I french pressed 1 oz of simcoe leaf four times, letting it sit in the water for 10 min before pressing. I pressed out four times. The first two teas came out aromatic with little bitterness. The second two were nuthin but bitter and slightly grassy (not unpleasent). Not sure about utilization and all that, but I had fun and I liked the idea of controlling the aroma/bittering additions.

Please experiment and let us know!

A pressure cooker will increase utilization and the maximum IBUs in the water. Can't find the graph right now, but I believe it was around 20% better @ 250F.

What's french pressing?

devaspawn said:

What's french pressing?

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Coffee generally... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_press

ohhhhhhhhh...It's coffee related and I confess to be ignorant on the subject. Other than the experiment that the OP is thinking about, what other use may it have for brewing?

Also, I have read that, without the malt, hops just can't reach or are unlikely to reach the utilization that is their potential. Any thoughts on this?

devaspawn said:

ohhhhhhhhh...It's coffee related and I confess to be ignorant on the subject. Other than the experiment that the OP is thinking about, what other use may it have for brewing?

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Tiny tiny mash?

That would be interesting if you had one small ingredient that you wanted to inhibit the fermentation of (by changing the mash temperature).

I french pressed some hops in a small amount of wort (1L or so). Added this "tea" straight to fermenter and used the hops for bittering. Tasted really nice. I think you have to use wort or something and not straight water.