Hop experiment

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danculwell

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I'm going to brew up 6 mini batches of beer each with just light malt extract and a single hop. I don't really know what individual hops do to my beer. I've seen sites that describe certain hops but I can't really relate the descriptions to my beer drinking experience so I'm gonna find out. What hops would you choose? I already have some cascade and some willimette so those are definitely in. What would you suggest for my other 4? I want to try a wide variety of hops. Once I have that done then I might go back and do the same thing with 6 or so similar hops varieties (based on my favorite from this experiment) so I can see the nuances.

As far as my procedure I'm going to make one big batch of wort with the water and extract. I'll then measure it evenly into the 6 (or however many batches I'm going to do) fermenters. Then I'm going to make a hop tea for each fermenter using the different hops. I'll add the hops at 60 min, 15 min, and 5 min for each type of hops. Then I'll add the tea to the fermenter and a portion of the yeast.

Does this seem like a good procedure for something like this? Is there anything you would do differently? Also what yeast would you recommend? Something cheap (dry) that would be the most neutral in the beer? After I find out about hops I'm going to do another similar experiment with different yeasts.
 
Can't really say anything to your procedure as I have no idea if that would work or not, but I'll answer some of your other questions.

Hops: I would do 2 American, 2 English, and 2 German/Noble hops. That way you can kinda get the taste of each major regional varieties. My suggestions; Cascade(American), Willmette (American), East Kent Goldings (English), Challenger (English), Saaz (Czech/Noble), and Hallertauer (Germany/Noble).

As for yeast I would go with something like S-05 or another clean yeast. That way the yeast is not getting in the way of what you are trying to get at.

Welcome to SMaSH brewing. It is fun.
 
If you want to capture some of the more unique hop tastes and aromas out there, consider Simcoe and Citra in there somewhere.
 
I've never done it, but I imagine that boiling in wort and doing a hop tea yields different results. Otherwise I'd think the norm would be hop teas as it would save tons of money with the higher utilization.
 
I've never done it, but I imagine that boiling in wort and doing a hop tea yields different results. Otherwise I'd think the norm would be hop teas as it would save tons of money with the higher utilization.

I started thinking that as well. I'll probably make one big batch of wort and split it up into smaller pans and hop the actual wort.
 
How are you deciding on the amount of hops? I would think that you would want to standardize the AA% or IBUs being used (as opposed to weight). Though I guess an argument could be made for doing it by weight to see how big (prominent) each type is.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure which would make more sense, but I think that it's probably going to have a pretty major impact on results.
 
I've been going back and forth on that too. I think I'll go with the same weight of each (probably a couple pellets in each addition) so that I can see the difference in bittering first hand. I'm not too worried about making the beer super balanced and drinkable. I'll only end up with a couple bottles of each.
 
I thought I way overhopped my Willamette SMaSH with .75oz for 1 gallon (60,15,5) and excused it by saying it was intended to show the hop characteristics, not be delicious... but damn does it taste good! I strongly recommend the Imperial India Pale Lager SMaSH method :D

When I try other hops, I'm not going to worry about trying to keep them similar... just going to hop the hell out of 'em.
 
I've been going back and forth on that too. I think I'll go with the same weight of each (probably a couple pellets in each addition) so that I can see the difference in bittering first hand. I'm not too worried about making the beer super balanced and drinkable. I'll only end up with a couple bottles of each.

If you use similar ones to what sp1365 said, you won't have to worry too much since they're all pretty close in AAs
 
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