Dude Where's My Hops?

[konkers]

I've been re-discovering home brew this year. I've just finished up a batch of American IPA from Brewing Classic Styles. It has 3 oz of late hop additions (full recipe below.) Now that it's kegged, chilled, and carbonated there so little hop flavor and aroma that I can barely notice it if I try really hard. The hops were recently purchased from the MoreBeer! store in concord and immediately put in my freezer.

This is an all grain brew. Here's as much info about my process as I can think to provide.

Didn't do any water measurement or adjustment. Here in Oakland our water is ridiculously soft:

Alkalinity, bicarbonate as CaCO3: 25 – 31 ppm
Alkalinity, carbonate as CaCO3: 2.4 - 3.6 ppm
Calcium 3.4 – 10.8 ppm
Hardness as CaCO3: 12 - 21 ppm
Magnesium: 0.6 - 2.5 ppm
pH: 8.8 - 9.4
Potassium: 0.4-1.0 ppm
Silica: 9.9-12.3 ppm
Sodium: 4.5 - 10 ppm
Sulfate: 3.7 – 10 ppm

I run my water through a 3 stage sediment and carbon filter to scrub out the cholormine.

I mashed at 65 C (149 F) for 90 mins. Didn't take a pre-boil SG reading. Boiled for 90 mins. Post boil was 1064. Evaporation was higher than I was used to and added 0.75 gallons of water at 20 mins before flameout.

At flameout I whirlpool/immersion chilled until the wort was at 18C. I then transfered through a strainer into the carboy and aerated for 15 minutes through a sintered stone with filtered air.

Pitched a starter according to mrmalty.com. Starter was started in the morning using a stir plate. Pitched late in the evening (not vigorously fermenting yet.)

OG: 1.064

Fermented:
1 day @ 18 C (64.4 F)
2.5 days @ 19 C (66.2 F)
.5 days @20 C (68 F)
finished @21 C (69.8 F)
I sampled the gravity starting 10 days after brewing at which point it had already reached terminal gravity: 1.011. Tasted the sample and noted very little hop taste/aroma.

3 weeks after brewing I racked it into a keg then chilled, pressurized, and carbonated it.

Recipe:

12.75 lb Rahr 2 row
0.75 lb Munich Malt
1.0 lb Crystal 15
0.25 lb Crystal 40

1 oz Magnum(14.3%) whole @ 60m
1 oz Centennial (9%) pellet @ 10m
1 whirlfloc tablet @ 10m
1 oz Simcoe (12%) pellet @ 5 min
1 oz Amarillo (9%) pellet @ flameout
WLP001 Cal Ale yeast.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[gcdowd]

You should have at least some hop flavor/aroma. But I think dry hopping would have given this recipe a lot more hop presence. I burst my IPAs with lots of late additions and dry hops. I'm talking like 3-4 ounces at 5 min or less and another 3-4 ounces of dry hops.

 

[mrskunk]

You should try adjusting your water.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/

You can enter your water profile and adjust it to the Hoppy/bitter profile, there are also the mosher idea water profiles you could try instead

 

[mrskunk]

I had a similar problem with my ipas using soft water, nothing really popped

 

[gcdowd]

One thing I do to excentuate the hops too is to add gypsum to the boil. Seems to work well

 

[Threetall]

Adjusting your water is a good option, and adding more and more hops. 4 oz isn't much for an IPA. Also consider your OG:IBU ratio. If it's 1:1 then that's pretty spot on. So if you have an OG of 1.064, shoot for around 64 ibus.

 

[plumber_bob]

Here I was expecting to read that you had woke up the morning after and couldn't remember where you had put your hops!

I did that, last night, with 2 kegs of beer I'm aging. Looked for an hour before I found them. and they hadn't moved that far.

pb

 

[konkers]

Thanks all. I'll try adding some Gypsum to my next batch and dry hopping this batch.

 

[Piratwolf]

Gypsum makes a big difference. For 5gal I use about 1 tablespoon (I add it to the mash, FWIW), but my starting sulfate is higher than yours. In your case I'd start w/ 1.5 tbsp and adjust from there.