Cold steeping hops

[scottland]

It's experiment time. Common convention is that the alcohol in beer acts as a solvent and helps dissolve the hop oils and resins into the beer giving more hop aroma. I've found the opposite.

My pale ales take on these wonderfully strong, perfume-like aromas from dry hops (5.0% ABV beers). I can add 1-2oz to a 5gal batch, and get a big, punchy hop aroma.

My DIPAs and recently my 20% ABV 120 min clone take much, much more dry hops to achieve the same result. My 120min clone was dry hopped 3 separate times with a total of 6oz of dry hops(5gal batch), and it still doesn't have a 'strong' hop aroma. Why?

Does alcohol actually act as a solvent for hop oils? If so, do the hop oils get bound up in the alcohol, and aren't released to be smelled? Because I haven't seen any scientific research on this, I'm going to do a couple experiments.

I do know: I get better dry hop aroma the warmer I dry-hop. 70* is better than 40*.

So my plan is to steep some hops in: Water, a Pale Ale, and an IPA and see what happens. I'll do a control for each one and see which takes on the most hop aroma from the same amount of hops.

Where I'm going with this is, maybe it's beneficial to make a cold-steeped hop tea and add that to DIPAs rather than dry hops. To be continued.....

 

[Monstar]

Cool. Looking forward to your results!

 

[ehedge20]

I look forward to your results as well.

 

[wyzazz]

My thoughts...

My pale ales take on these wonderfully strong, perfume-like aromas from dry hops (5.0% ABV beers). I can add 1-2oz to a 5gal batch, and get a big, punchy hop aroma. The "smaller/lighter" the beer the more hop aroma that will come through. This beer will become "balanced" much more easily.

My DIPAs and recently my 20% ABV 120 min clone take much, much more dry hops to achieve the same result. My 120min clone was dry hopped 3 separate times with a total of 6oz of dry hops(5gal batch), and it still doesn't have a 'strong' hop aroma. Why? "Bigger" beer is going to need more hops to give you the same perceived effect that you get on the "smaller" beers you make.

Does alcohol actually act as a solvent for hop oils? Of course, alcohol is a solvent plain and simple. But again, your higher alcohol beers need a lot more hop aroma to get the same perceived effects that your Pale Ale's have.

If so, do the hop oils get bound up in the alcohol, and aren't released to be smelled? I haven't a clue, but I suspect not.

Because I haven't seen any scientific research on this, I'm going to do a couple experiments. Awesome I look forward to your results!

I do know: I get better dry hop aroma the warmer I dry-hop. 70* is better than 40*. For every 10C you raise the temp, you increase the chemical reactions (good or bad) 10X. This is from Dr. Charlie Bamforth @ UC Davis.


Where I'm going with this is, maybe it's beneficial to make a cold-steeped hop tea and add that to DIPAs rather than dry hops. I don't think you'll get more flavor/aroma from the hops this way, but I could be wrong. Again, I look forward to your results!

 

[scottland]

"Bigger" beer is going to need more hops to give you the same perceived effect that you get on the "smaller" beers you make.

I'm definitely with you, but it's definitely disproportionate. Logic would say a beer with 2x the gravity would require 2x the dry hops to achieve the same effect, but I find it's more like 3-4x, and the bigger the beer gets, it seems to be exponentially more difficult to make hop aroma pop. I probably could have used 16oz of hops in my 20% beer and still not produced a massive hop aroma; it's there, but it doesn't pop.

My other thought process from all this was, what about going the other way with the Double IPA. The whole idea of the double ipa was way more hops, It's supposed to be the quintessential hoppy beer, like shoving your nose in a hop bale. But it's obvious the extra gravity gets in the way of that. The extra malt and alcohol definitely help balance the beer, but has anyone ever tried to take a DIPA hop schedule and use it with the malt bill of a 1.050 pale ale? I think that could be a better true 'Hop' exerpeince. How drinkable it would be....... I have no clue.

 

[D_Ranged_Eskimo]

...but has anyone ever tried to take a DIPA hop schedule and use it with the malt bill of a 1.050 pale ale? I think that could be a better true 'Hop' exerpeince. How drinkable it would be....... I have no clue.

Nope, but I'll be the first to sign up to be a guinea pig.

 

[scottland]

Ok, I played around with it:

The IPA and Pale ale had a pleasant dry-hopped aroma that you would expect.

The water, while it did have the citrusy hop aroma you would expect, had a significant vegetal aroma, similar to cut grass, or broccoli.

Scratch that idea.

 

[dcp27]

what was the gravity difference between the pale ale and IPA?

I do know: I get better dry hop aroma the warmer I dry-hop. 70* is better than 40*. For every 10C you raise the temp, you increase the chemical reactions (good or bad) 10X. This is from Dr. Charlie Bamforth @ UC Davis.

every 10C is 2x the reaction rate, not 10x

 

[scottland]

12 pts. I wasn't able to detect a big difference between the aroma pick up of the two.

 

[wyzazz]

what was the gravity difference between the pale ale and IPA?




every 10C is 2x the reaction rate, not 10x

I'll take your word for it, thanks for the correction.

 

[kpfeif]

Your data actually show that your hop oils ARE more soluble in your beer. When you smell your beer, you're smelling the hops dissolved in the CO2 that's coming out of solution. When your beer is a BETTER solvent for hops, less of the compounds will go into the CO2 that's coming out of solution, so you won't be able to smell it; it would rather stay in the liquid phase. It stays in the beer, where you have to perceive it with your tastebuds instead of your nose. Since you can't taste hops with your tongue, only the isomerized hop oils (with your bitter taste receptors), you don't detect any non-isomerized hops that aren't dissolved in CO2 so that you can smell them.

I expect that if you analyzed the beer itself, you'd that you actually are getting more of the oils into solution.

 

[scottland]

Your data actually show that your hop oils ARE more soluble in your beer. When you smell your beer, you're smelling the hops dissolved in the CO2 that's coming out of solution. When your beer is a BETTER solvent for hops, less of the compounds will go into the CO2 that's coming out of solution, so you won't be able to smell it; it would rather stay in the liquid phase. It stays in the beer, where you have to perceive it with your tastebuds instead of your nose. Since you can't taste hops with your tongue, only the isomerized hop oils (with your bitter taste receptors), you don't detect any non-isomerized hops that aren't dissolved in CO2 so that you can smell them.

I expect that if you analyzed the beer itself, you'd that you actually are getting more of the oils into solution.

That makes total sense.