Big hop flavor with 1/3 the hops

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I'm about to try a Pliny the Elder clone, and might try your hop tea idea. Do you have a recipe configured which includes the hop tea? Or could you take a peak at this recipe and send your ideas? I'm probably going with the extract version as I'm a noobie and this is my second batch.

Pliny clone recipe
 
Wonder what you could achieve by adding a HFR to the bottling bucket. Any thoughts on this? I am new to brewing and have been really interested in the french press idea.
 
I'm going to bump this thread just for the heck of it and to add some data. I made a red rye ale a few months back. Good but quite bitter. Just for the hell of it I put about two ounces of hops in a french press, (Chinook, I think). Poured hot, not boiling water and let steep (I didn't time this, but I'm pretty sure it was at least 15 min).

The character of the beer has really changed. There is a lot more floral, and piney flavor and aroma, and the bitterness is not as pronounced. I plan on experimenting with this more in the future to see how it works and to provide better data.
 
Going to try this. Now I guess my biggest issue is that I am going to have to go out there and drink a pint of beer so I have room to replace it with hop tonic. Oh the humanity!
 
Well, it has been a while now and I was wondering if anyone has doen any further work on this subject?
I am intrigued and plan to do some of this myself.
I like the idea of making a hop tea and saving for adding to the secondary then using the remaining hops in the boil for bittering(no waste).

I was thinking of steeping the hops for 15, 20, and 30mins in a basic wort ~1.040 at different temps like 140°, 160°, and 170°. Instead of "pressing" just filtering the hops out. Maybe filter with a paper filter or something like that.

My idea stems from what appears(to me) to be a "leaching" of tannins or some astringents from what previous posters have stated. I am thinking that a similar process to steeping tea leaves might give different results. Granted, I am not all that good at homebrewing but I can make a pretty darned good batch of iced tea!

I aplogize for reviving this thread but I am just now catching up with you guys!
Any thoughts or input??
 
I keep meaning to get back into trying hop teas again. I tried it a few times and didn't notice a big difference. Now that I know a bit more about the science utilizing hop alpha acids and isomerization etc I'm probably going to try it again soon.

Boil up some water and let cool to 160, toss in however much I'm dry hopping with into a french press and pour the water in, let it sit for 30 minutes and then move it to the fridge to cool. Dump the whole thing in when I plan on dry hopping and let it sit for a day or two before cold crashing and transferring to keg.
 
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I hereby resurrect this thread.
 
Bumped.
I have started to use a french press because I cool my wort in a sanitized water carrying container, around 23 liters, but I find that the resulting beer can lack aroma as opposed to crash-chilled beer.
What I do is to make some strong hop tea in the french press, fridge it in a sanitized Schott lab bottle, then use the pressed hops in the boil to provide bittering. There's a heap of alpha acid still in there and I seem to get fine bittering. Then I pour the hop tea into the fermenter at the same time as pitching the yeast. Improves flavour and aroma out of sight while still providing bittering. I understand that commercial breweries who use hop backs also reserve the hops afterwards and chuck them in the next brew as part of the bittering addition, so as not to waste the goodness. Makes sense, and it sure works.
 
I want to share a technique for maximizing hops by using a french coffee press to add hop aroma an flavor to beer.
In summary, I make a strong wort with primarily bittering hops. For these additions, I use high IBU hops and boil for at least sixty minutes. I make the wort between 10%-20% stronger than usual by using less water, but the same grain bill.

At the end of fermentation, I make a very strong hop tea in a one liter french coffee press. Generally, I add one liter of boiling water to two ounces of aromatic hops which steeps for approximately sixty minutes. I add this tea to the keg and replete by adding another liter of boiling water and steeping for another sixty minutes, for a total of approximately two liters of hop tea. This hop tea essentially brings the final volume of beer up to my desired five, or ten gallons.

Finally, I finish the beer as usual. Force carbonate and chill for about a week.

The results are very profound. I am producing a hop flavor and aroma with two ounces of hops, which previously required three to four times the amount of hops. My double IPA once required a pound of hops, most of which were used for aroma and flavor, now requires around four ounces per five gallons of beer.

Give it a try. As an experiment, make a strong hop tea with a french press and add it to an existing lightly hopped beer in a keg. Or on a smaller scale, make a cup of hop tea and add a portion of it to a pint of Pale Ale or IPA.

This technique works very well for me. I am able to continue to make my highly-hopped Double and Triple IPA's with a reasonable amount of hops.

There's no reason why this doesn't make sense. I have probably thought of the very same technique literally dozens of times. I have never actually set out to re-invent the wheel, but you are certainly not the first that I've heard of in doing this.
 
After reading the OP, I decided I much prefer the idea of adding tea to the kegs instead of throwing a bunch of vegetation in them.

I went a got a French Press for just such a use, and my very first IPA came out with a rather nice Hops aroma to it (if maybe a little subtle for an IPA), from only 1.5 oz of hops into a 10 gallon batch. This technique seems to work pretty well, though next time, I think I will add 2-2.5 oz to knock it up a notch for the crazy hop heads.

Thanks for the technique, puney!
 
Bringing this back once again. I got a couple of new french presses a bit back from the SA store new in the box for like 7 dollars. Its actually a set with a large one for the coffee and a smaller diameter for frothing cream. I looks like the smaller one would be perfect for making a hop tea. Is anyone doing this currently and if so is there more consensus on water temp, water type (or wort?), time of steep, etc to get the maximum hop aroma while minimizing astringency?
 
Ok... so, I've read 14 pages in the thread. My question hasn't been answered. I'll ask and hope someone throws me a bone. Sorry in advance.

I have an ale that's done but isn't balanced. It skews towards sweet, I don't want that. Could I bring up the bitterness (even if just by 10 ibu) by using this method???
 
Vman said:
Ok... so, I've read 14 pages in the thread. My question hasn't been answered. I'll ask and hope someone throws me a bone. Sorry in advance.

I have an ale that's done but isn't balanced. It skews towards sweet, I don't want that. Could I bring up the bitterness (even if just by 10 ibu) by using this method???

This technique is basically a mini whirlpool addition in a separate container. The industry consensus seems to be that whirlpool hops do add some bitterness, but I'm not sure how much you will get here. I would try it though. Let us know if it works.

My other thought is creating a concentrated hop boil for 90 minutes and using that to add some IBU to balance through blending to taste.
 
After reading the For the Love of Hops. Using cold water/beer and infusing hops into the beer will create a whole different taste compared to a heated infusion tea or yeast eaten hops.

So I am thinking of using .....edit: sorry I found my answer starting at page eight.
 
I have about 4.5 gallons of Double Bastard that has little or no flavor or aroma but plenty of bitter. I would like to do a hop tea with Chinook to add flavor and aroma.

Perhaps I could draw some of the beer off, heat it up, make a hop tea out of it, chill it, then dump it back into the keg.

Does this sound like a good or bad idea? If good, how much beer and hops? The pelletized Chinook is approximately 12 AA.
 
I want to share a technique for maximizing hops by using a french coffee press to add hop aroma an flavor to beer.
In summary, I make a strong wort with primarily bittering hops. For these additions, I use high IBU hops and boil for at least sixty minutes. I make the wort between 10%-20% stronger than usual by using less water, but the same grain bill.

At the end of fermentation, I make a very strong hop tea in a one liter french coffee press. Generally, I add one liter of boiling water to two ounces of aromatic hops which steeps for approximately sixty minutes. I add this tea to the keg and replete by adding another liter of boiling water and steeping for another sixty minutes, for a total of approximately two liters of hop tea. This hop tea essentially brings the final volume of beer up to my desired five, or ten gallons.

Finally, I finish the beer as usual. Force carbonate and chill for about a week.

The results are very profound. I am producing a hop flavor and aroma with two ounces of hops, which previously required three to four times the amount of hops. My double IPA once required a pound of hops, most of which were used for aroma and flavor, now requires around four ounces per five gallons of beer.

Give it a try. As an experiment, make a strong hop tea with a french press and add it to an existing lightly hopped beer in a keg. Or on a smaller scale, make a cup of hop tea and add a portion of it to a pint of Pale Ale or IPA.

This technique works very well for me. I am able to continue to make my highly-hopped Double and Triple IPA's with a reasonable amount of hops.

Thanks for posting this. I will give it a go. Cheers
 
Very interesting read! I see it's been some time since anyone has posted on this topic. Just wondering if anyone has ran into any oxidizing issues? Thanks in advance!
 
Very interesting read! I see it's been some time since anyone has posted on this topic. Just wondering if anyone has ran into any oxidizing issues? Thanks in advance!

I think most people look to hop-stands to get maximum flavour & aroma out of their hops, although I have heard of one guy that does the hop-tea thing with his priming sugar to get a little boost of hops in his beers.
 
I just bought a french press to try out your technique.

I was Just wondering if you adjust the amouint of bittering during the boil since for the hot water temperatures needed to make the tea will extract some bittering as well.

Do you use just one hot water pass for the hop extraction or do you add hot water multiple times to get more flavor extraction?
 
Just FYI, in case the OP doesn't get back to you - this thread was started in 2008.

:)
 
I would like to run this topic because I intend to try this technique to replace dry hop.

I know it's been a while and I'm interested in using this technique and are the results the same?
 
I find this experiment with hop tea vs dry hop.

Guy say that hop tea infuse half aroma compared to dry hop and suggests pouring tea into the fermentor several days prior to bottling.
And I'm on the trail of that conclusion and I'm thinking of trying in the next batch.

I think his other suggestion that the hop is three days in the water is not good because the hop will drop too many grassy flavors.
 
I would like to run this topic because I intend to try this technique to replace dry hop.

I know it's been a while and I'm interested in using this technique and are the results the same?
And you got successful at?

I started a thread that was nearly ignored in other forum, trying to compare a flameout/hopstand addition to a hop tea post fermentation addition.


At short words, I will make a experiment in my next batch. It will be a splited batch, 18 L each, one I will add all the hops in a hop tea (7 L) and stand at 90C for 30 min. In the other one, same thing, but few days before bottling. 95 g of CTZ each, 3.8 g/L.

Any thoughts about it? Should it worth all the extra work?
 
And you got successful at?

I started a thread that was nearly ignored in other forum, trying to compare a flameout/hopstand addition to a hop tea post fermentation addition.


At short words, I will make a experiment in my next batch. It will be a splited batch, 18 L each, one I will add all the hops in a hop tea (7 L) and stand at 90C for 30 min. In the other one, same thing, but few days before bottling. 95 g of CTZ each, 3.8 g/L.

Any thoughts about it? Should it worth all the extra work?

I haven't tried anything about it yet. Somehow I orientated myself to simple recipes that have the addition of hops only during boil.
 
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