Losing hop flavor / aroma

[d_boosh]

Okay so I have seen a lot of different posts by many of my fellow new(er) all grain brewers about losing hop flavors and aromas over relatively short periods of time.

Are these issues more likely to be from low utilization during the brew process or just normal dissipation ? I Have some APAs ive done that have only bitterness left and aroma is all but gone.

I also know this is a broad question with a multitude of possible problems / processes / fixes built in..... I guess the root question would be - what is the best single improvement a new brewer can make to his/her process to preserve or impart hop character ?

I just really want to make a sierra nevada like apa that stays hoppy beyond the 1 month timeframe.

 

[slym2none]

Have you tried moving your late-addition hops into one big hop-stand? It seems you can get a massive amount of flavour & aroma out of hops this way.

On the appropriate styles of beer, I have or will convert my recipes to using a neutral hop for bittering, and all aroma & flavour hops will be used in a hop-stand for 30-45 minutes or so.

 

[d_boosh]

I have not but I could try reducing mid boil hop additions and moving those to larger additions later in boil or at flameout

 

[Grantman1]

When it comes to losing hop flavor and aroma, how quickly are we talking here? IME, if we are looking a few months or more down the road, nearly any APA or IPA is going to lose much of its flavor and aroma, regardless of how it is hopped.

+1 on the hop stand comment. I started doing this for all of my IPAs (as opposed to 15/10/5 min additions) with a massive dry hop, and never looked back. I like the smooth, intense hop character so much more this way.

 

[m00ps]

First off - hopstand. It cant be reiterated enough

Im guessing you dont keg (yet) right? Along with big hopstands, kegging was the biggest thing that improved my IPAs due to limiting oxygen exposure. So I would try to do that in your bottling process. Do you keep a lid seated on teh bottling bucket when you bottle? How many times do you open the fermentor to take samples? Also, with you bottling regimen, do you immediately get a cap on each bottle after filling?

 

[d_boosh]

I usually do about 6 or 8 bottles then cap them off. I do try to limit oxygen exposure during bottling process but traditionally dont re-lid the bucket I will do that this next batch. Im pretty patient and I usually dont open the fermentor. Just once to rack to secondary (take a grav reading) then I dont open again until Im sure it will be at or near my target FG. This method has worked well and I rarely have to wait longer for it to finish fermenting.

Im going to brew tomorrow night and plan on doing a hopstand now to see how it goes

 

[Queequeg]

Hop burst, hop standing and dry hoping are all techniques to increase hoppiness of a beer. They do not as far as I am aware increase stability of hop flavour. I have recently switched to a beer gun for bottling, the idea being to minimise the ingress of O2 into the beer. Though your bottling process may not introduce enough O2 to cause oxidation flavours it only takes small amounts to accelerate decomposition of hop compounds. That's why breweries like serria Nevada use a hop torpedo to dry hop. Also certain caps can absorb hop oils.