Hop FLAVOR w/ late DME addition.

So I know that by doing a late addtion you can use far less hops and achieve skyrocketing bitterness, but what about for flavor?

For instance, I'm about to brew a single hop saison with Sorachi Ace bittering and flavor additions, all of which occur w/o the presence of DME. However I will steep about a # of grain before the boil (duh) so I'm thinking that would help with flavor impartation. I have never attempted anything of the sort.

I just want to make sure that awesome Sorachi Ace flavor will be present as well as the bitterness.

Hop schedule:
.25 oz 40 min
.25 oz 10 min
.50 oz 1 min
1.044 OG

Thoughts?

 

your late additions won't skyrocket bitterness. The late additions are how you get the flavor and aromas out of the hops.

 

I know that part, I'm wondering if I will still get the flavor impartation even w/o DME being present before the hop addition.

 

Yeah you just need heat and the right amount of time. I'd say move the 40 to 20 and do a 60 minute addition but thats just my opinion.

 

I.E. I would use more than 1 oz of hops for this recipe with a normal extract addition, by adding it at the end I have reduced the total hops down to 1 oz because of the increased bitterness yield allowed by the late addition. I'm worried that by using only 1 oz of hops I would extract substaintial bitterness because of the late addition, but not have enough hops to achieve a decent hop flavor.

 

Thanks hotrodtrash! That sounds like a great idea!

 

Adding your DME late does not lead to "substantially" increased bitterness. Supposedly it would give increased hop utilization but that's been debated recently and not found to be as dramatic as people originally thought. I forgot which site the podcast came from but they did a test and noticed a difference but not tremendously dramatic and not the same results for each tested batch.


Rev.

 

I don't think it makes all that much difference. There is a thread somewhere that has some explanation about why hop utilization isn't really effected by when you add your extract.

 

Thanks for the insight, I'll keep this knowledge in mind when formulating recipes in the future...and altering this one haha.

 

I kinda touched on this in the other thread...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/i-love-dme-227064/index6.html#post2673500

 

Thanks for the link. Although I have had better success adding DME late than LME. I know that seems bass ackwards to your opinion, but that's my personal experience and I've been experimenting a lot lately.

May be just me, but sometimes I feel as though boiling DME for more that ~15 min can result in unwanted flavor. Again, I may be crazy.

 

Yeah, do whatever it works for you. Perhaps the "unwanted flavor" you're talking about is not necessarily bad, but just not your favorite.

 

Indeed Indyking, it's not a "bad" flavor or "off" flavor, just one I am not looking for in certain brews. Either way, I greatly appreciate your input.