Boiling hops in water

[NotAnyMore]

I am brewing a session style mead that I want to give a hop profile as close to a pale ale as I can. To do this I am am dry-hopping the batch and plan on blending some hop tea when kegging.

My question is will I loose any of the hop utilization or flavors by using plain water or should I adjust the ph or add some sugars to raise the sg of the tea?

 

[Grod1]

In your situation i think i would probably add some honey to the tea,I dont think you need to change your ph unless the ph is highly acidic.I, like the way you are thinking.I have had a similar idea but theoretically took it even further. What if you made the hop tea then freeze distilled that to get just a small amount of hop extract that can be added to a specific amount of finished beer/mead.

 

[ba-brewer]

I read somewhere that some sugar helps or is need for proper utilization. Utilization does go down with an increase in SG, could get tricky with a small amount of liquid.

Maybe try brewerfriend or some other online calculator to see how many IBUs you get from different combinations.

 

[NotAnyMore]

Update on the process, after reading a few articles on hop utilization and ph I did decide on adding a small amount of citric and malic acid to the tea. Not owning a ph meter i added them in equal amounts 1/8th tsp at a time until i was able to taste them. There was no honey added to the tea to avoid re-fermentation in the keg

to make the tea i boiled 1 gallon for 30 minutes
the hopping schedule was
30 min: 1oz cascade
20 min: 1oz cascade
10 min: 1/2oz cascade, 1/2oz citra
5 min: 1/2oz cascade, 1/2oz citra

I also dry hopped for ~1 week with 2oz cascade

using online ibu calculators results in 76 ibu, but in reality it tastes more like a strong pale ale in terms of bitterness, but the flavor and nose are incredible. Overall I feel satisfied with the end result but feel it does still need some minor adjustments.

 

[Grod1]

thanks for the feedback!