I am having trouble understanding hop additions that are not very early or very late. Hops provide three things
1. Bittering
2. Flavor
3. Aroma
-The best utilization for hop bittering is early additions (high bittering utilization, no Flavor+Aroma)
-The best utilization for hop F+A is late additions, since those compounds are volatile and evaporate away the longer they are boiled (little bittering, high Flavor+Aroma).
But when you add hops at 20, 30, 45 minutes, ie in the "middle" of the process, it seems to me that you are not extracting the most AAs you can out of the hop, and you are boiling away a lot of the Flavor+Aroma! Seems like a waste of hops. Why not just keep to early and late hopping? Would you get more out of your hops that way?
Obviously there are a lot of brewers smarter than me who do it, so I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just trying to figure out why it's done. Doesn't make any sense to me.
1. Bittering
2. Flavor
3. Aroma
-The best utilization for hop bittering is early additions (high bittering utilization, no Flavor+Aroma)
-The best utilization for hop F+A is late additions, since those compounds are volatile and evaporate away the longer they are boiled (little bittering, high Flavor+Aroma).
But when you add hops at 20, 30, 45 minutes, ie in the "middle" of the process, it seems to me that you are not extracting the most AAs you can out of the hop, and you are boiling away a lot of the Flavor+Aroma! Seems like a waste of hops. Why not just keep to early and late hopping? Would you get more out of your hops that way?
Obviously there are a lot of brewers smarter than me who do it, so I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just trying to figure out why it's done. Doesn't make any sense to me.