Best hop order for hopbursting?

1oz Chinook
1oz Centennial
4oz Citra
1oz Cascade
1oz Crystal


I want to hopburst an ipa, but I'm not sure in what order I should do so for these hops. Any suggestions?

I'm making a rye IPA next week where I'm planning on using Chinook as bittering. Then Centennial and Citra for the other additions. I was also wondering if I should use the Chinook on some later additions as well.

I think it depends on what you are looking for in terms of distinct flavors and aromas. Chinook is much different from Citra is much different from Centennial, etc.

Which of the following would you want to "feature" as flavor and/or aroma:
dank piney forest - Chinook
citrus/floral - Centennial
tropical fruit/citrus - Citra
grapefruit/citrus - Cascade
spicy - Crystal

What you are looking to feature will help us suggest a hopburst schedule.

Also do you want to showcase bitterness or hoppiness more? In that case you should consider co-humulone levels:

Hoppiness (less crushing bitterness):
22-24% - Citra
20-26% - Crystal

Bitterness (more crushing bitterness):
29-34% - Chinook
28-30% - Centennial
33-40% - Cascade

kaz4121 said:

I think it depends on what you are looking for in terms of distinct flavors and aromas. Chinook is much different from Citra is much different from Centennial, etc.

Which of the following would you want to "feature" as flavor and/or aroma:
dank piney forest - Chinook
citrus/floral - Centennial
tropical fruit/citrus - Citra
grapefruit/citrus - Cascade
spicy - Crystal

What you are looking to feature will help us suggest a hopburst schedule.

Also do you want to showcase bitterness or hoppiness more? In that case you should consider co-humulone levels:

Hoppiness (less crushing bitterness):
22-24% - Citra
20-26% - Crystal

Bitterness (more crushing bitterness):
29-34% - Chinook
28-30% - Centennial
33-40% - Cascade

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I really want the tropical and citrus flavors and aroma to be the main focus on it. Maybe with some green, forresty notes on the finish. I want to incorporate all of these hops in some way in a hopburst, where all hops are added at 30min to 0.

You can still hopburst with a bittering charge. Without one, you will have very low bitterness, not indicative of an IPA. It will just taste like hop juice.

Shoot for 1.062 OG / 1.010 FG

Bitter with all of your Chinook at 60, then use 3 oz. Citra at whirlpool and the remaining 4 oz. hops for the dryhop. This should still be quite fruity/juicy/citrusy, yet better than it would be without a bittering charge.

bobbrews said:

You can still hopburst with a bittering charge. Without one, you will have very low bitterness, not indicative of an IPA. It will just taste like hop juice.

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I wouldn't call it hop bursting if you're adding a heavy bittering charge. That would just be called adding a lot of late addition hops. The point of hopbursting is to get all of your IBUs from 20-30 minute additions and later so that you preserve more of the flavor and aroma of all of the hops you use. You can easily get enough bitterness without a traditional 60 minute addition, you just have to use a little bit more hops.

Also doing a hopstand helps because at temperatures over ~180F alpha acids from hops are still being isomerized, but if the wort isn't boiling then you aren't volatilizing all of the flavor and aroma compounds from the hops as much. I just listened to a Can You Brew It episode where Jamil was saying that in his brewery (Heretic) he only adds flameout kettle additions to Evil Twin and the IBUs are listed at 45.

To the OP: are all of those hops you listed for the boil or is that what you have for boil and dry hops as well?

This would be my suggestion:
Boil:
1 oz - Chinook for 30 min (AA 13, IBU: 30.29)
1 oz - Citra for 20 min (AA 11, IBU: 15.69)
1 oz - Centennial for 10 min (AA 10, IBU: 9.12)
1 oz - Citra for 10 min (AA 11, IBU: 10.04)
1 oz - Cascade for 0 min (AA 7)
1 oz - Citra for 0 min (AA 11)

Dry Hop:
1 oz - Citra for 7 days (AA 11)
1 oz - Crystal for 7 days (AA 4.3)

That would give you around 65 IBU.

peterj said:

I wouldn't call it hop bursting if you're adding a heavy bittering charge. That would just be called adding a lot of late addition hops.

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?????

The two are completely independent of one another. Many breweries are hopbursting and adding far more than 1 oz. for bittering. Alchemist and Russian River included... Besides, 1 oz. hops for bittering is not a heavy bittering charge.

peterj said:

The point of hopbursting is to get all of your IBUs from 20-30 minute additions and later

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Again, you can still hopburst an ale that has early hop additions. Using the technique does not disqualify all ales with hop additions prior to 30 minutes.

I would say 1 oz of chinook in a regular IPA is a traditional heavy bittering charge. That would probably get you around 50-60 IBU.

bobbrews said:

Again, you can still hopburst an ale that has early hop additions. Using the technique does not disqualify all ales with hop additions prior to 30 minutes.

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I think you are right that you can add some hops at 60 minutes if you want, but I just wouldn't do very much. Like maybe 0.25 - 0.5 oz depending on the hop. But again I definitely don't think it's necessary at all.

bobbrews said:

The two are completely independent of one another. Many breweries are hopbursting and adding far more than 1 oz. for bittering. Alchemist and Russian River included... Besides, 1 oz. hops for bittering is not a heavy bittering charge.

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I wouldn't say they are completely independent. The more you add at the 60 minute mark the less you will be able to add as late addition hopburst because they will cause the beer to be overly bitter. I feel like the point of hopbursting is to maximize flavor and aroma with the same amount of bitterness. If I was a commercial brewery I would probably add a bittering charge too because it would be way more expensive with such large batches, but on the homebrew scale it's just another couple bucks for a few more ounces of hops.

Someone has some IPA learning to do.

bobbrews said:

Someone has some IPA learning to do.

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I agree, but I'm a little busy to give you lessons right now.

Ladies and gentlemen.


Hop bursting: adding a large amount of hops in succession with under 20/30 minutes left in boil to achieve flavor and aroma.

All late hopping: obtaining all of your Ibus though hop additions 20/30 minutes and under.

One can hop burst with a bittering Addition or fwh

One cannot make an all late hopped ipa with a bittering/fwh addition.

peterj said:

I agree, but I'm a little busy to give you lessons right now.

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Lol... Please peter. Moving along.

Right, the point of this thread was to help the OP with his recipe, not to debate the semantics of hop bursting and late hopping. And I think the hop schedule suggested by bob or me would result in a great beer. I would obviously choose my own, but everybody has different tastes.

I'm in the Peter camp for what its worth. I'm a fan of little to no traditional bittering charge and if I do its usually FWH. The hop schedule peter posted earlier sounds pretty good for my tastes.

Mr_Pear said:

I'm a fan of little to no traditional bittering charge and if I do its usually FWH.

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This method is fine, but it typically produces something less IPA-ish and more like a balanced APA. There is nothing wrong with that if you are not a fan of the natural bitterness associated with IPA's. Appreciating bitterness is not something that comes natural; it truly grows on you with time. I believe that if you want to stay more true to the American IPA style, then you usually don't resort to FWH or hold back on hops whatsoever. It's very much a go big or go home style.

EyePeeA said:

if you want to stay more true to the American IPA style, then you usually don't resort to FWH or hold back on hops whatsoever. It's very much a go big or go home style.

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Very True! If you can't handle the heat, then get out the kitchen!!

Lol, in all honesty, you can still brew IPAs as EyePeeA stated and have something fairly West Coast, hoppy, and smooth. No need to fear early or middle bittering charges. Commercial breweries of fantastic IPAs rely on these early & middle charges to build the bitterness before they pound it out with whirlpool and dryhops. You'll see something like a 90/30/0/DH schedule appear quite frequently in clones. All of the hopbursting they do is typically a huge charge at 0 min.

Can someone tell me what different are you going to taste an an IPA that is hop bursted v. an IPA that has one bittering addition at 60 min and the rest of the hops added in the last 15 minutes, aroma whirlpool and then dry hopped? To me it just seems more efficient of hops to get most of your IBU's from a 60 minute addition of a clean and cheap bittering hop (like Magnum) and then use about 1/3 of the expensive flavor/aroma hops as a late boil addition and the other 2/3 as a flame out/dry hop addition?

Educate me! High end hops (Citra, Simcoe, Amarillo, Chinook, Centennial, etc) are too expensive to waste when you love IPA's!

EyePeeA said:

This method is fine, but it typically produces something less IPA-ish and more like a balanced APA. There is nothing wrong with that if you are not a fan of the natural bitterness associated with IPA's. Appreciating bitterness is not something that comes natural; it truly grows on you with time. I believe that if you want to stay more true to the American IPA style, then you usually don't resort to FWH or hold back on hops whatsoever. It's very much a go big or go home style.

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Again, you can get the same amount of bitterness using all late additions, especially if you employ a hopstand. You're not holding back on hops at all, it's exactly the opposite. You have to add MORE hops. I guess the massive amount of flavor and aroma that comes from the extra hops you have to add isn't a taste that everyone can handle or will like, and that's fine. We all have different preferences. And it depends on what you're shooting for in the finished beer. You don't always want the hop profile you get from hop bursting. But the OP does.

peterj said:

Again, you can get the same amount of bitterness using all late additions, especially if you employ a hopstand. You're not holding back on hops at all, it's exactly the opposite. You have to add MORE hops. I guess the massive amount of flavor and aroma that comes from the extra hops you have to add isn't a taste that everyone can handle or will like, and that's fine. We all have different preferences. And it depends on what you're shooting for in the finished beer. You don't always want the hop profile you get from hop bursting. But the OP does.

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The bitterness perceived in IPAs hopped at FWH-10-5-0-Dryhop or 15-5-0-Dryhop will be vastly different vs. IPAs hopped at 60-15-10-0-Dryhop or 60-30-0-Dryhop. The first two examples won't even taste that bitter, even if all four beers had 90 IBUs. You will get more juicy fruitiness from those first two examples. Yet all four examples can be hopbursted, so it doesn't mean the less bitter ones will be more flavorful and aromatic.

By the way, hops don't isomerize under 175 F. So unless you're holding the wort above this temp. for a long time after the boil ends then there isn't much bitterness being imparted as you think there is. Even if you managed to attain 90 IBUs from only late additions, the bitterness would not be perceived the same. All IBUs are not created equal. We even know this with FWH'd beers, where the bitterness comes off as completely different.

All IBUs by definition are created equal. It's a measure of the bittering molecules in the beer performed with a spectrophotometer. And the equations that we use to calculate IBUs are based off of these measurements. 90 IBUs = 90 IBUs no matter how you get it. So they will have the same amount of bitterness, but maybe it's masked a little by the increase in hop flavor. Maybe that's what you mean by perceived bitterness. And yes, for the hopstand I'm talking about, you leave the wort above 180 for an extended period after flameout.

On a side note, I don't really buy into the whole FWH idea. From experience and a scientific perspective it just seems like a slightly extended bittering addition.