recipes and your choice of hops

I am curious. When you develop a recipe how do you determine what variety of hops you will use... and if the recipe you are developing makes use of two or three different hops to bitter, flavor and add aroma, how do you decide which hops go best together? Do you look for similar hops or hops that are very different? And what is it about their interaction that you are looking for with the choice of grains you have made? Thoughts? Thanks

Yes lol. It depends on the style. Whether or not you want the hops to blend in, or really pop out. Every strain of hop has a different bittering, flavor, and aroma properties..but some strains are more intense than others in their different properties. When I brew an IPA, I think, what flavors/aromas do I want from my hops. Do I want it to be fruity, citrusy, herbal, earthy, floral, etc. I think about my malt choices and whether I want it to have some malty sweetness or be a bit dry. Once I decide those things, I can start looking at different hop strains and different grains to use. I usually bitter with only 1 kind..2 at the most. Typically I like a clean, neutral bitter so I pick hops for that.

For my latest IPA, I wanted to feature Galaxy hops. They give lots of passion fruit and some citrus flavors and aroma. I decided to pair that with some Citra for some more citrus flavors/aromas. I wanted to round it out with some earthy dankness so I went with some Columbus as well, which works well with the fruitier Galaxy and Citra. I also bittered with the Columbus.

For my grains I went with some maltier flavors than your typical pale base malt and crystal. I had some crystal 60, melanoiden, and a little carafoam in the steep to add some more malt body and mouthfeel. It turned out wonderful!

EDIT: You can find a lot of places that recommend good hop combinations for particular flavors/aromas.

Recipe design is a never ending process. You also need to think of the recipe as a whole (grains, hops, yeast, flavoring components) to try to maintain a balance. Each part should support and compliment the others.

Much of the hop choices depend upon whether or not I am trying to brew to a certain style. If I am, I will be selecting grains and hops to fit that style of beer. The style guidelines give you aroma, flavor, color, bitterness, and body targets, so everything must balance out to match the pre-determined expectation.

When brewing off-style, I am usually thinking about a given flavor impression that I want to highlight. Usually it is based upon a given hop aroma/flavor and this becomes the focal point for selection of the other hops, grains, yeast, etc. for the recipe. mrgrimm101 has it right when he says to select other hops that support the base flavors and possibly expand the palette a little bit and add a little more complexity.

The same goes for the malt selections. If I want the hops to dominate the flavors, such as in most IPAs, I will lean heavily on the base malt and go light on the character malts so they don't detract from the hops aromas and flavors. If I am looking to brew something more malt dominated, I choose more subtle hops if I want any hop presence or more neutral bittering hops if I want just the malts to be apparent and balance out any residual sweetness.

Then you can look at yeasts which accentuate malt flavors, finish really dry, and/or give characteristic flavors themselves.

When I design a recipe, I am usually thinking that it will take 3 to 5 repeats to get the recipe to be in balance and have the exact flavors I envision from the beginning. Taking careful notes on the aromas and flavors you create or discover along the way helps greatly. Overall, I feel that I've been lucky in that most of my later recipes seem to fit in quickly to the profile I wanted from the start and only minor tweaks are needed from that point.

A good source for hops aromas that will help you determine which play well together is the aroma wheel at www.hopunion.com. For malts, I am a firm believer in chewing on some to get the basic flavors of each malt down in your memory and then chewing on a mixed handful to give yourself some idea of how they behave when mixed.

Making a beer recipe is a lot like cooking.

When I make, say, a pork dish, I think about where I want to "go" with it. Do I want to go Italian-ish with it, with oregano and basil type of flavors? Or, Mexican with chiles and cumin to start with? And then go from there.

When I make a beer recipe, I'm thinking about different beer styles first. Do I want a malty edge, or a crisp hops note? Then, if I want a hoppy beer, do I want a citrusy note? Or something "clean" or even "earthy". Then I think of flavor combinations I used in the past and liked that had those qualities- like an American amber ale with cascade (citrusy) and willamette (a bit earthy) together with a bit of a caramel malt flavor as well, and go from there.

At first, it's easiest and most helpful to use a quality resource to look at recipes fitting the description you may want. Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff is a good one, as is our recipe database. If something is described as "fruity", and that sounds terrible, that's one to stay away from! But if it sounds good, see what else is in the description and try to "match" up the flavors. I take notes of what I like, and what worked together, and then use that in a future batch.

The descriptions of the hops usually help a lot. Some are "spicy" or "woody", while others are "melony" or even "oniony". To me, "resiny" and "citrusy" sound great, and I use those type of hops often in IPAs.

If you read up on the trade descriptions for the different hops you can start there by getting a good idea what you will get from different hop varieties.

Myself personally I don't have a sensitive enough palate to pick out individual characteristics in an IPA to say "Oh this beer has Citra/Mosaic/Centenial in the aroma", I can tell though that theres a lot of fruity citrus character. This is why I tend to go with 1-2 (max 3)hop varieties in the aroma/whirlpool/dry hop additions. I did a Citra/Cascade/Wakatu Black IPA recently and I can pick out the big citrus punch but the complexity is lost to my insensitive palate, though it went over really really well with my brew club (would probably not score in the 40s though at competition cause I know its definitely on the sweet side).

That beer was pretty much born from a desire for a black IPA with big citrus character. I knew the Wakatu would give me zested lime and floral notes, Citra would be the big citrus punch, and the Cascade would be the primary draw and would reinforce the floral/citrus. All three give similar citrus character, while all 3 provide slightly different supporting flavors/aromas.

It takes a long time to really get a good idea of how to write your own recipe. It took almost 20-24 batches of all grain recipes for me to get a good idea of how to write a decent recipe, I had some lucky shots in the dark early in brewing but I was dumb and went from Mr. Beer extract kits straight to all-grain BIAB writing my own recipes (there were some doozies, SWMBO likes to compare all my good recipes now to my "Wet Garbage Lemonade Ale" that was supposed to be a mulberry wheat ale).

For my early attempts at IPAs, I wish I had went and looked at other peoples grain bills rather than make up my own grain bill. I know better now what I like and where that overlaps with what makes a good IPA. Have some fun with the hops and just try to keep it to 2-3 hop varities in the aroma/whirlpool/dry hop so you arent spending a ton of money on a single IPA. Don't worry too much about it tasting "perfect". If it tastes very citrusy you got yourself an nice American Pale Ale, if its spicy/earthy/floraly youve got an English style IPA which sort of represent to two ends of the scale.

Made an extract hoppy English brown with a lot of EKG and Fuggles, I almost didn't think I would like it. But EKG in large quantities gives it a really cool thyme herbal quality with shades of citrus. It was purely born from my desire for a dry crisp brown ale and use up the 5oz of EKG I had in the freezer. Used a bit of sugar to give it some rocket fuel, S04 yeast cause I had been getting nice high attenuation with it, and 3oz of EKG with 2oz of Fuggles split evenly at 5 minute mark and a 20 minute whirlpool, dry hopped with 2 more ounces of EKG for 5 days. When I remake it I'll change a few things about the malt side of the deal (using Marris Otter and making it as an all-grain beer instead of extract, but I purely wanted to make a fast beer I could ferment and start drinking in less than a month).

Thank you all for these really useful responses. Very helpful, indeed. I guess my "takeaway" is that with cooking (Yooper) I know what spices and herbs I want to use to bring out or to produce a certain effect (I use cumin a great deal and za'atar too because I like what they do with vegetables) and because I have been cooking for so many years I have a reasonably good handle on the use of complementary and oppositional flavors. But... with hops I have not yet got anything like the same sense of familiarity and so what I need to do (both literally and metaphorically) is suck it and see. In other words, I need to taste the hops, taste one or two together, make a batch that focuses on those I have tasted and like. Make a few batches using different base malts. Take careful tasting notes and then make a few additional batches where I have tweaked the quantities of those same hops and tweaked their time in the boil or their time as dry hops ... A slow but methodical process.

bernardsmith said:

Thank you all for these really useful responses. Very helpful, indeed. I guess my "takeaway" is that with cooking (Yooper) I know what spices and herbs I want to use to bring out or to produce a certain effect (I use cumin a great deal and za'atar too because I like what they do with vegetables) and because I have been cooking for so many years I have a reasonably good handle on the use of complementary and oppositional flavors. But... with hops I have not yet got anything like the same sense of familiarity and so what I need to do (both literally and metaphorically) is suck it and see. In other words, I need to taste the hops, taste one or two together, make a batch that focuses on those I have tasted and like. Make a few batches using different base malts. Take careful tasting notes and then make a few additional batches where I have tweaked the quantities of the hops... A slow but methodical process.

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Yes, it can be a slow process. But as others said, the descriptions on the websites where you purchase hops can be very helpful. For example, on Mosaic:
"A complex array of tropical fruit, citrus, berry, herbal, earthy and pine characteristics", plus the list of the co-humulone, myrcene, humulene, etc percentages. Those oils also give you a hint of the aroma and flavor and qualities, once you read up on that.

A way to describe it is this- say you have a brand new spice called "Spicealot". You haven't used it or even smelled it, but you read, "This spice comes from a plant related to rosemary but it is more pungent. It blends well with rosemary and oregano and other strong flavors". Well, you know that you won't use it in some dishes, but you know you'd think it might blend really well with your lamb dish. That's short of how you can use the hops descriptions- if one hop is "melony" and "juicy", you may love it in a pale ale but probably not in a kolsch or German lager. (Although you might!)

Until you have a real solid picture of how a hop variety taste to you, those descriptions really help!

One thing that many brewers do is a SMaSH beer- a single malt and single hop beer. That way you can see exactly how Vienna malt and amarillo hops taste, for example. It may be very hard to pick out what centennial brings to an IPA if it's combined with columbus and cascade hops, but if you use 100% centennial in a non-complex grainbill, it's pretty easy to pick out.

Thanks Yooper. Again, very helpful. Very. As it happens I have been working on making SMaSH's for exactly the reason you suggest. Although I stopped when the temperatures Upstate climbed to the 90s. Will go back to making single gallon SMaSH batches in the next few weeks as the fall begins to roll in and the temps fall back to the 60s and 70s

I have to add the classic word of encouragement in this case too.

In the end, itll still make beer. It may not always be a perfect 50/50 competition beer. It may not turn out 100% how you expect it to turn out (god, until I hit batch 25 of my own written recipes they NEVER turned out how I expected them too, but I'm a stubborn man). It may even sometimes taste weird.

But its still beer. To top that off, you wrote the recipe and you made it. Theres a lot of people that can't even say that about their dinner, nevermind the beer they drink.

(This is in no way saying people who just brew other peoples recipes are lesser brewers. I wish I wasn't a stubborn person and looked more closely at others recipes to get a better idea of ratios, but, it was always fun getting to where I am now where I am fairly confident my recipe will be close to what I'm going for and I am always confident it will be tasty.)

IMO, a great way to discover different properties of different hops is to brew several smaller SMaSH IPA batches. Picking one single hop strain for bittering, flavor, and aroma additions lets you get a feel (and taste) for the effect that it will have in your brew. Then once you have some experience with different hops, you can decide which ones you would want to combine or exclude in your next brew.

I totally agree about making smash batches.....or rather SH, as I seldom use a single malt. When you develop a feeling for what various hops contribute, the ideas about what will go well together gradually comes from experience. The hop descriptions often don't match what your pallette finds very accurately. I personally like to blend hops from other parts of the spectrum to tame the extremes instead of reinforcing them. For example strongly fruity hops I tend to blend with more spicy floral noble type hops, because I'm not interested in a citrus bomb or overwhelming passionfruit or stonefruit flavor profiles. One of my favorite hops is Nelson Sauvin..... which I use more than almost anything.. I've learned that it pairs well with the passionfruit / stone fruit type hops. Mosaic which I'm extremely fond of, I generally pair with something like Willamette, or other hops in that class. I often use Summit for bittering because it requires incredibly small amounts, but I also use it later in the boil for it's distinctive fruity flavor. Brewing is an adventure. You find something you like, and play around the edges a bit......"What if I added a bit of this to offset this?" etc.


I brewed all grain batch #96 yesterday...... and I've only been brewing all grain for 18 months! I rarely repeat anything exactly, but I do take tasting notes.


H.W.