Are bittering hops a necessity?

[TripleC223]

As I've gotten more and more into recipe crafting, I've started to question whether all beers require a bittering hop addition. I have some high-AA hop varieties on hand, but unless I use them in very small quantities (0.25 oz), I run out of IBUs to "spend" on my flavoring and aroma hop additions. This has become problematic, as I don't have a digital food scale.

I should note that I've been doing 3-gallon batches recently, which obviously affects IBUs. But even in the IPAs I've done, I find myself conducting 30-minute boils just to keep them between 40-60 IBUs with room for some heavy late-hopping.

All that said, am I doing my beers a disservice by getting my IBUs from late additions? Is there such thing as a 15-minute IPA where you just bomb the hell out of it with late hops?

If you can get bitterness AND flavor/aroma from late hops, then what is the need for a bittering hop addition?

 

[TasunkaWitko]

I don't have a digital food scale.

You can get a very usable scale at Pick-Your-Mart for 12 or 15 dollars.

 

[Rob2010SS]

So I have some questions for you in order to understand what you're getting at. Why do you want to limit yourself to 40-60 IBUs? Is it to maintain a style or is that just what you've learned your taste buds prefer?

What style hops are you referring to when you mention you have high AA varieties?

When you say large, late hop additions, how large are you talking? What is an example?

I just plugged in some amounts of hops into brewersfriend and 1oz of chinooks at 30, 15, 5, and flameout, it's only at 36 IBU's.

Just trying to figure out what you're going for in order to give you some better opinions.

 

[Sadu]

It all depends if you want cheap IBUs or late-addition hop-flavored IBUs.

My best pale ales and IPAs don't do a bittering addition. It is fine to get your bitterness from late additions only, which is called hop-bursting. I just hit them hard with something high alpha at 15 mins and lots of late hops. Don't forget that whirlpooling after flameout also provides some bitterness. Other people will get all their bitterness from the 60 min addition then all the other hops go into flameout and dry-hopping which don't add bitterness. Either is fine.

High alpha like Columbus / Simcoe / Nelson Sauvin lend themselves well to hop-bursted IPAs as you get good bitterness and good flavour. With something like Motueka / Cascade / EKG it gets more expensive due to the lower AA rating and I'd usually use a 60 min bittering addition to keep the late hopping reasonable.

I think you should definitely give it a go and see what you think. Also, a 0.1 gram scale is $6 delivered off Aliexpress and will make your life a lot easier. I'm regularly doing 2 gram bittering additions on my 1 gallon batches.

 

[z-bob]

I always use bittering hops, but often they go in at 30 minutes instead of 60.

The beer I'm drinking now (not *right* now, but when I get home) used Sorachi Ace hops, and I just used a half ounce at 20 minutes and a half ounce at 5 because the alpha acids were so high; 14 and I wanted to the IBU's below 30. The beer is plenty bitter.

 

[LLBeanJ]

For my hop forward brews, nothing goes in before the 30 minute mark and it's not uncommon for me to wait until only 20 minutes are left in the boil to start hopping. As Sadu stated, use high AA% hops so you get a fair amount of bang for the buck. I find that you get more flavor and aroma when adding the hops later, which is why I do it. I also have found that my sweet spot for IPAs is about 50 IBUs and about 35 for pale ales, which I can achieve fairly easily with only late additions.

 

[TripleC223]

So I have some questions for you in order to understand what you're getting at. Why do you want to limit yourself to 40-60 IBUs? Is it to maintain a style or is that just what you've learned your taste buds prefer?

What style hops are you referring to when you mention you have high AA varieties?

When you say large, late hop additions, how large are you talking? What is an example?

I just plugged in some amounts of hops into brewersfriend and 1oz of chinooks at 30, 15, 5, and flameout, it's only at 36 IBU's.

Just trying to figure out what you're going for in order to give you some better opinions.

I have the following hops:

Bittering
Nugget (14.8 AA)
Warrior (17.9)

Dual Purpose
Azacca (10.7)
Calypso (12.8)
Centennial (9.2)
Citra (13.8)
El Dorado (13.4)
Jarrylo (13.2)
Mosaic (11.2)

Aroma
Cascade (6.4)
Willamette (3.6)

I would love to try out some of the bittering hops, but I just can't find a way to use them. Maybe if I brewed a larger batch, they'd be easier to use, but I've enjoyed my 3-gallon brews so far.

As to why I limit the IBUs, I've just found that I enjoy my pale ales and IPAs in that 40-60 range. I've certainly drank more bitter beer, and enjoyed a few, but I would probably have trouble putting away 30+ from a batch.

In the APAs and IPAs I've brewed, I've played around with hop additions (and combos) of 0.5 or 1 oz in the 30-0 boil time range, and recently began experimenting with whirlpooling.

All this is to say that I've enjoyed the beers I've brewed so far, which I guess says plenty. I just see 60-minute bittering additions as fairly standard in a lot of recipes, so I wasn't sure if I was missing something. (Still, maybe I am).

Thanks for the insight.

 

[Rob2010SS]

So I guess to go back to your original question, no, I don't think you're doing a disservice to your beer by not doing a bittering addition at the beginning of the boil. Sounds like a lot of people don't even start adding hops until the 30 minute mark into the boil. This was actually a very interesting read for me...
https://www.morebeer.com/category/secret-big-hop-aroma-flavor.html

Talks about how a some breweries are experimenting with all of their hop additions 40 minutes into the boil to get more flavor and aroma. Seems to be successful as well. I think this kind of touches on your "15 minute IPA" thought as well. They're still doing full boils but only adding hops in the last 20 minutes.

Someone told me in another thread that this is the beauty of home brewing - you can do whatever you want to make a beer that YOU enjoy. I actually really want to start experimenting with this for myself.

 

[SlitheryDee]

My next beer is going to have all the hops added in the last 10 minutes or later. Beersmith seems to think I'll still get around 27 IBUs out of it. I'm hoping for some good hop flavor as well, but this is the first time I've tried anything like this so I guess we'll see.

 

[helibrewer]

You need to do a full boil, boiling does a lot more than just isomerize hops. IBU's are nothing but a guideline, I can assure you that if you did a chemical analysis your true IBU's would not be what your recipe indicates. There are a lot of factors that effect utilization of hops and you need to understand how your recipe software calculates that utilization. If you are deriving it yourself, then what are you using for your utilization numbers?

Oils are flashed off very quickly in the boil so for flavor/aroma, you want to add those very late or in the whirlpool where utilization is down around 10% or less. Remember that break material is going to strip some of that, decreasing utilization further.

Very late/whirlpool additions are all the rage now in IPA's (NE IPA's) but they don't contribute much bitterness at all, you still need a bittering charge at 60 minutes or so to balance out the malt sweetness.

 

[schematix]

I have never liked a beer i made without a bittering hop dose. I've done several IPAs this way, and i will never, ever, ever, do it again.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

I'm going to have to go against the grain....I've tried the all late/flameout method a few times for an IPA and always found it missing something. I find a 60,30,5, flameout addition makes for a nice balanced beer. More hops go in at the 5 and flameout than the 30 though

 

[beernutz]

Funny you should mention this topic as at our homebrew club meeting last Monday a member brought a zero IBU IPA, at least according to Beersmith.

However that 10 gallon batch had 28 ounces of hops (1.75 pounds!) added at various times after flameout. It tasted to me as if about 50 IBUs of bittering hops had actually been used even though none technically had been. Huge hop aroma though.

 

[schematix]

My next IPA is going to use a 35.5oz blend of Citra, Simcoe and Mosaic...

Going to do something like this:
60: 4oz
30: 2oz
10: 2oz
5: 4oz
0: 12oz
Dry: 13.5oz

This is only a slight variation on my last big IPA where I used 32oz of dry hops. I only used 1oz of bittering hops and with all the other aroma, flavor and dry hops, it just didn't have the bitterness back bone to balance all the juicy flavors. It just came off as cloying orange juice, even though it was pretty dry.

 

[helibrewer]

Did a triple IPA that used about 1lb of hops including the dry hops (4 additions). For bittering I used extract to reduce all that hop material (followed Russian Rivers Pliny the Younger recipe)....Vinnie uses extract in his big IPA's, stuff is great.

 

[z-bob]

Maybe I need to start brewing IPA's. I bought several pounds of hops from Hops Direct 2 or 3 years ago and I have barely made a dent in them (and a pound of Magnum from Farmhouse last year because it was on sale so cheap that I haven't even opened yet.) Been brewing European malty styles and cream ales, and those just don't use much hops -- the hops are important but it only takes an ounce or so for 4 gallons.

 

[helibrewer]

Maybe I need to start brewing IPA's. I bought several pounds of hops from Hops Direct 2 or 3 years ago and I have barely made a dent in them (and a pound of Magnum from Farmhouse last year because it was on sale so cheap that I haven't even opened yet.) Been brewing European malty styles and cream ales, and those just don't use much hops -- the hops are important but it only takes an ounce or so for 4 gallons.

Exact problem I ran into when ordering bulk....I'm like you, brew mostly continental European styles.

 

[Rob2010SS]

So i don't want to hijack the thread but you guys are talking some large numbers of hops in IPAs. How many oz of hops would you expect to use in a typical 5 gallon ipa?

 

[schematix]

So i don't want to hijack the thread but you guys are talking some large numbers of hops in IPAs. How many oz of hops would you expect to use in a typical 5 gallon ipa?

I wouldn't even call it an IPA until you reach 1 lb per 5 gallon.

 

[filthyastronaut]

It really depends on what you're going for. I do a lot of beers with a 15 min. and 5 min. hop addition schedule, and the amounts depend on the hops I'm using and the style of beer. I like the flavor contribution of Nugget in Porters and Stouts with that kind of hop schedule. With IPAs it's usually enough hops being added late that the IBU level is more than adequate with just late additions. It's not traditional, but as long as you're something even close to your target IBU (a ballpark calculation in the first place) and getting the flavor you want out of your hops, do whatever you need to with your hop schedule.

 

[beernutz]

So i don't want to hijack the thread but you guys are talking some large numbers of hops in IPAs. How many oz of hops would you expect to use in a typical 5 gallon ipa?

That greatly depends on the hop's alpha acid percentage. I have hops with AA %'s in the mid teens and some in the low single digits.

 

[TriColor 1824]

Has anyone found that the hop flavor / aroma in a beer is less than what you'd expect utilizing the BeerSmith Recipe formulator? I have made several IPA's and Ambers and have found them to be on the "malty" side. With the Ambers my IBU's have been at the high end of the normal range for the style while my IPA's have been in the mid-to higher range and still the malt predominates. This seems to be independent of the type of hop used and occurs despite hop additions at the beginning of the boil, at 45 minutes and at flameout. Has anyone else experienced this with BeerSmith?

 

[CudaJoe]

since your creating your own recipes. Why dont you try an experiment and make two similar recipes. One without bittering hops with more flavoring/aroma hops, and one using the normal recipe.

I think what you'll find is that depending on the recipe, you will be spending a fortune on hops to achieve your IBUs you need for the beer style just adding in at 30mins and 15mins.

 

[ericbw]

since your creating your own recipes. Why dont you try an experiment and make two similar recipes. One without bittering hops with more flavoring/aroma hops, and one using the normal recipe.

I think what you'll find is that depending on the recipe, you will be spending a fortune on hops to achieve your IBUs you need for the beer style just adding in at 30mins and 15mins.

That's a very good point. You get more bang for the buck when you add them at 60 minutes. You're going to be boiling it anyway, so add some hops.

As others mentioned: get a scale OR at least figure out how much .25 of pellets is. A tablespoon, a teaspoon, whatever. Then you can guesstimate. Early hops give something more than just bitterness.