Kettle Steeping Hops

[jcarson83]

Well it's been a little while since I've had a somewhat inteligable question to ask of the great homebrewers on this forum but I think I have finally found one worthy. I've been reading the book "Designing Great Beers" and keep running across the term kettle steeping, a method to increase hop aroma. My first guess is that this is some sort of hop tea that is added to primary or secondary after cooling but don't realy know because the book fails, as far as I have seen, to give a complete description.

Does anyone here ever do this? What is your method?


By the way I also ran across a section of the book about "Old Ales" that gave me the idea to mix my Lacto infected beer with another good Porter for a old ale taste.

 

[greg75]

It sounds to me that you're talking about first wort hopping, which is putting some aroma hops in the kettle before the wort is put in the kettle. While sparging, the first runnings, and subsequent sparge runnings absorb the aromatic oils from the hops before the boil, which helps with a lot of things, namely added head retention, and a "more uniform hop utilization" (or something like that...I just read up on this myself one week ago!)

Anyway, I did my first AG this weekend, an ESB. And, the recipe called for FWH of EK Goldings. I'll let you know if I can detect any benefit from this practice in six weeks when it's ready. From what I've read, it's becoming an increasingly popular practice among homebrewers.

 

[haish]

Kettle steeping means adding hops at flameout so not as much volatile hop aroma is lost by boiling. Typically you can steep hops for around 10 mins before cooling.

Diluting bad beer with good beer is a great way to make a spoiled batch drinkable.