Hop Tea with priming sugar for maximum hoppiness

Imagine a 5 gal IPA that is done fermenting/cold-crashing and is ready for bottling. You take a pint of the green beer and boil it with your priming sugar, as usual.

When the priming solution temperature drops to around 148ºF, you add 4oz of Centennial to it and stir every once in a while. Whenever temperature drops to around 140ºF you light the fire and make it reach 148ºC once again. Keep stiring and maintaining temperature around 148ºC for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Finally, carefuly pour this solution on a french press and go bottling.



Is there any downside on this? Could it give stronger flavors and aroma to a hoppy recipe? Could it replace Dry Hopping?

Give it a shot and report back to us! I dont see why it would give you any off flavors or anything negative. Why not steep the hops in a bag though so that you dont have to worry about straining them out afterwards.

Yes, using a hop bag is a good idea!

I do this fairly often. You can get the same results from a quarter oz of hops. Theres a limit to how much hop oil can be carried in beer and a pint will hit threshold long before 4 oz worth. It also doesn't need an hour. I've found 20 mins to be plenty. I usually put the water directly in the french press, throw the hops in when the water hits 160, then let it steep/cool for 20 mins or so and drain it.

Hop teas add a good bit of flavor, but you don't need so much hops, and IME it does very little for aroma. I've had to dry hop the full batch at or above 70F to get the aroma kick I wanted.

masonsjax said:

I do this fairly often. You can get the same results from a quarter oz of hops. Theres a limit to how much hop oil can be carried in beer and a pint will hit threshold long before 4 oz worth. Hop teas can add a good bit of flavor, but you don't need so much hops, and IME, it does very little for aroma. I've had to dry hop the full batch at or above 70F to get the aroma kick I wanted.

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Good to hear you do it, dude! Could you tell me what the results are?

Here is the thing, Masonsjax: I have brewed some pretty intensely hopped beers. FHW, long hop stands with 4oz of hops, dry hopping with 6oz of citra etc. Despite the amounts of hops, fresh hoppy aroma and flavor were never achieved. I have even added dry ice in order to purge o2 out of beer and head space!

(Believe me, I have done extensive research on how to dry hop. Im not doing anything wrong. I suspect the lack of hop aroma and flavor is due to oxygen)

Hop Tea is the next technique I want to try. The oxygen exposure time should be much shorter. And since other techniques has not worked, I am thinking about using 75% of my flavor/aroma hops on this hop tea.

Thanks for the tip, I have not remembered that maximum oil solubility detail. How could I increase the amount of hops used on hop tea? Any idea?

I had problems chasing big hop aroma myself. The aha moment came when someone mentioned the temp of the dry hopping. I had been doing it in the low 60s. I then tried at 72F and got good results. Now I get very good aroma from fewer hops. I wouldn't have thought 10-15 degrees would make a difference, but now I'm routinely getting the results I was after. I usually skip the hops tea, but when I do use it, one pint is plenty for my tastes. The flavor it adds can almost overwhelm a 5 gal batch IMO.

masonsjax said:

I had problems chasing big hop aroma myself. The aha moment came when someone mentioned the temp of the dry hopping. I had been doing it in the low 60s. I then tried at 72F and got good results. Now I get very good aroma from fewer hops. I wouldn't have thought 10-15 degrees would make a difference, but now I'm routinely getting the results I was after. I usually skip the hops tea, but when I do use it, one pint is plenty for my tastes. The flavor it adds can almost overwhelm a 5 gal batch IMO.

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Yes, the warmer the hoppier!

As for the hop tea thing, you say 1 pint is plenty. You mean one pint of beer, heated till a certain temperature, adding 1/4oz of a nice aroma hop and then standing there for half an hour or so?

rafaelpinto said:

Yes, the warmer the hoppier!

As for the hop tea thing, you say 1 pint is plenty. You mean one pint of beer, heated till a certain temperature, adding 1/4oz of a nice aroma hop and then standing there for half an hour or so?

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Yes basically. I usually just use plain filtered water warmed in my electric tea kettle instead of beer. I keg so if I'm naturally carbing I add the sugar directly to the keg, not dissolved in water.

A pint of tea seems to add a lot of flavor, more than enough really, and it adds to the bitterness or at least the perception of bitterness. That seems to fade a bit over time, so I think it's just very fine particulate settling out. I actually prefer the flavor from a post boil kettle stand and tend to use hop tea only if I didn't have the time for a stand or forgot to do one, or if I just want over the top hop flavor.

Aroma was always the elusive characteristic for me, but I've been very happy with that since I warmed up the beer when dry hopping.

masonsjax said:

Yes basically. I usually just use plain filtered water warmed in my electric tea kettle instead of beer. I keg so if I'm naturally carbing I add the sugar directly to the keg, not dissolved in water.

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Thanks a lot

Im finally going to try this.


Now I am thinking about dry hopping half of the batch with 3.5 oz of Amarillo and half of it will not be dry hopped, but will receive the tea on bottling.

The idea is that such a light beer will show its problems more easily. I am even thinking about bottling 1 gallon without any other hop additions. Lets see how it goes.

Any news? Seemed interesting

Yeah, I did it.

Good results, actually. Not the strongest aroma/flavor, but good amounts of them. The profile is different from dry hopping, thats for sure.

I've done it several times, never more than 10 grams of hops, and maximum 20-30 mins steeping at 70 celsius or lower. You definitly should try it!

I've thrown citrus zest in the priming solution at flameout and strained it to add flavor. It's pretty nice, so I guess it should work with hops, too.

do you guys think there is any noticeable difference in resulting flavor/aroma from this technique regarding if you steep in priming solution of corn sugar vs DME vs etc.? (just curious)

fwiw, corn sugar has a few more gravity points over DME. is this in RDWHAHB range?

regarding masonsjax steeping in plain water...i've read reports from some naysayers about how hop tea only lead to astringency and few positive returns, which would possibly explain the almost dangerous potency he experienced. maybe you need to have some density in there to kinda balance things out? i don't know, i'm no expert on this by any means

I only used plain water and i didn't had any problems.

I wouldn't call it dangerous potency, just a little unbalanced is all. YMMV.

yeah, i'll have to see. got a 5 gallon pilsner/oat ipa going right now. might try 1 oz max of chinook or galaxy pellets in corn sugar, haven't decided yet.

this would be preceded by a 4 day, 3 oz total dry hop of chinook and galaxy (or 4 oz if i omit the priming hop step). just weighing out my options