Explanation on Hop additions?

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adamjackson

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I see a lot of simple and complex hops addition schedules on HBT and elsewhere.

What is the real benefit of a 60,50, 40, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, 0 hop addition schedule?

Can someone post or explain exactly what happens to the alpha acids at each schedule? Meaning, why do a 0 minute versus 15 minute addition? What actually happens by doing .25 ounces of hops every 5 minutes from 30 to 0?

Thanks.
 
You just need a good brew book to explain it. May I suggest any by John Palmer.

Hops are used for multiple reasons, but mainly Bittering, Flavor and Aroma. Bittering hops are added at the beginning of the boil for maximum alpha acid extraction. As these hops boil, most of the more delicate oils and flavors will burn off, so all that's left is the bitterness. These would be 60 or 45 minute hops.

Hops flavoring is another aspect of hops. For example, take citra. It's a lemon/lime tasting hop that works best as a flavoring and aroma addition. Adding them later in the boil will preserve more of the delicate flavors and aroma oils, so add them at 20 minutes or less.

Very late addition hops (less than 5 minutes) are largely used for aroma, however if you add a LOT of late addition hops, you will also extract some flavor from them as well.

Then, there's dry hopping. This is adding hops to your beer after the boil, while the beer is in the primary fermenter. Usually, these hops will soak for five to seven days. This adds, you guessed it, more hops flavor and aroma.
 
I'll read the Palmer book..I think the flavor and aroma difference is what I wasn't sure of. I was thinking the 60 minute addition was going to be the dominant hop while the 5 minute would be lower in impact on the flavor but you're saying flavor first and the less boiling the hop gets, the less flavor and more aroma it contributes?
 
It really is pretty simple.

Hops added early are for bittering because the flavor and aroma boils off.
Hops added mid brew add flavor but minor bitterness
Hops added late add aroma but almost no bitterness.

I usually do a hop addition at 60 for the bitterness,then do hops in the 20-10 minute range for flavor, and additons in the 10-0 range for aroma.

Then of course for an IPA a good addition of dry hop ties it all together.
 
It really is pretty simple.

Hops added early are for bittering because the flavor and aroma boils off.
Hops added mid brew add flavor but minor bitterness
Hops added late add aroma but almost no bitterness.

I usually do a hop addition at 60 for the bitterness,then do hops in the 20-10 minute range for flavor, and additons in the 10-0 range for flavor.

Then of course for an IPA a good addition of dry hop ties it all together.


Great thanks!
 
It's far from simple. Experts admit they know very little about hops. 5 minute, flameout, or whirlpool additions add bitterness, and 60 minute Citra tastes very different from 60 minute Nelson.

How to Brew is online and has some basic stuff, the new Stan Heironymous book has a lot of good information.
 
This is a frustrating topic to me. There is no such thing as hop flavor, distinct from bitterness and aroma. Bitterness is a flavor, astringency is a tactile sensation, and everything else comes from volatile aromatic compounds. Talking about hop flavor as if it is more than a combination of hop aroma and bitterness is just confused.

There's still a lot we don't know about hop chemistry, but there are two possible benefits to mid-boil additions, as I see it. They may actually allow you to achieve higher IBU levels than with 60 minute additions alone. There's a Basic Brewing episode where they present evidence that with a 60 minute addition alone, only 50 IBUs are possible. Given that White Labs et al. have measured significantly higher figures in commercial beers with the same assay, it seems likely that latter additions can raise the IBU ceiling, possibly to counteract the effect of break material pulling iso-alpha acids out of solution.

Secondly, mid-boil additions may help to extract more glycosides (nonvolatile molecules which may be broken into aromatic compounds during fermentation) from the hops. I don't know of any evidence that this is the case, but it seems somewhat plausible. More information on glycosides here: http://beersensoryscience.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/glycosides/

Personally, I include a 30 minute addition in IPAs, but otherwise add all my hops at 60 minutes or as a hop stand addition (or dry hop, of course).
 
Gavagai said:
This is a frustrating topic to me. There is no such thing as hop flavor, distinct from bitterness and aroma. Bitterness is a flavor, astringency is a tactile sensation, and everything else comes from volatile aromatic compounds. Talking about hop flavor as if it is more than a combination of hop aroma and bitterness is just confused.

if you're right, why does my Centennial APA taste like grapefruit and my Pilsner not? Are you saying it's all aroma and I'm not really tasting any difference?
 
Here is what he is saying, though it is a bit technical. We can taste basically, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. This is really all we can taste. It is the receptors in our nose that differentiate those tastes on various levels. The nose can pick up something like 10,000+ different aromas, that when combined with the sensory information from our tongue create a unique flavor. Flavor and aroma go hand in hand. Have you ever had a cold, stuffed up nose and sinuses, and all the food you eat has almost no taste? That shows you just how important your nose is to flavor perception. So in short, I would say aroma is the differentiating component of flavor. You can experience aroma alone, but flavor and aroma go hand in hand, unless of course you just want to say your beer is sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or umami.
 
A guy here in Knoxville brewed an IPA that was very hoppy, incredibly aromatic, and really, really good last year. He used exclusively whirlpool hops.

I have found that for me, the best hops schedules are moderate amounts of med-high alpa (usually magnums) for 60, than bombing the late additions at 15, 10, 5, 0, and dry hop. You can get awesome IPAs with 80+ IBUs that aren't tongue scrapers. I usually try to get around half my IBUs from the 60 minute addition, and half from the late additions. I rarely do any mid-boil additions at all. If I do, I'll take some of my 60 minute addition and move it to 30 minutes, just taking some of the edge off of the bitterness.
 
if you're right, why does my Centennial APA taste like grapefruit and my Pilsner not?

Because you used Centennial for the APA (and more of it, at different time slots). What did you use for the Pilsener?

You may still have something rather grapefruity with the same exact hop type/amount/schedule if you used a pilsener base with lager yeast.
 
I would not discredit large early and middle additions in IPA type beers. They are more important than you think. Many commercial breweries are pumping out excellent hoppy beers with a simple 90/30/0/DH schedule... or something similar. The middle addition is the least important of the bunch, (early/middle/late/dryhop) but it certainly helps to round out the bitterness while offering more flavor. The additions that are less important than you may think are 15-10-5. These are known as late additions, but then again so is a 0 minute addition. There are a bunch of head brewers out there who believe they can gain more with very large 0 minute whirlpool additions rather than wasting hops within the 15 minutes prior to this time.

I like to think of it like adding all of the hardier, woody fresh herbs like rosemary, thyme, or sage when a soup is just about to come to a boil (early additions that build flavor in the final product). But adding delicate fresh herbs like parsley, cilantro, or basil when the soup is complete (0 min additions, and the hops I want primarily for aroma). All six are herbs, but chefs know that you shouldn't add harsh raw rosemary to a soup post-boil, nor should you waste time on adding delicate cilantro to the boil.

I've been posting these from time to time on different threads. Of course they all use a different total amount of hops, but you get the idea (by weight):

Pliny the Elder
28% early
14% middle
28% late (all 0 min)
30% dryhop

FW Union Jack
6% early
19% middle
31% late (all 0 min)
44% dryhop

Stone IPA
22% early
0% middle
44% late (all 15 min)
34% dryhop

Kern Citra IIPA
13% early
8% middle
25% late (15/10/5 min)
54% dryhop

If you enjoy all of these beers, then there's no reason to be scared of adding hops in a different way. In my research, the one trend for most of the great commercial IPAs seems to be a heavy emphasis on the dryhop, followed by whirlpool, early hops, and then the middle additions.
 
I like your soup analogy. As a lover and maker of hearty soups, this makes a lot of sense.

The main driver of this question is that I'd like to start building my own recipes instead of just going off recipes online and kits. So if I know the properties of a few hops and want to make a beer that has a nice bitterness and mix of pine and tropical fruits, figuring out the additions is critical.
 
The main driver of this question is that I'd like to start building my own recipes instead of just going off recipes online and kits. So if I know the properties of a few hops and want to make a beer that has a nice bitterness and mix of pine and tropical fruits, figuring out the additions is critical.

One of the big factors for successfully building your own recipes is that you have to know your ingredients. Read about them. Brew with them. Email the head brewer of your favorite beer and ask questions. Look into some clone recipes. One clone which I know to be piney and tropical is Ballast Point's Sculpin. There are clone links for this beer via a simple search on HBT. Sculpin is a great beer, but at the same time I perceive it as more bitter and less aromatic than Pliny the Elder.
 
One of the big factors for successfully building your own recipes is that you have to know your ingredients. Read about them. Brew with them. Email the head brewer of your favorite beer and ask questions. Look into some clone recipes. One clone which I know to be piney and tropical is Ballast Point's Sculpin. There are clone links for this beer via a simple search on HBT. Sculpin is a great beer, but at the same time I perceive it as more bitter and less aromatic than Pliny the Elder.

Well, that's what I've been doing up to now. Listing my favorite beers and then finding clones of them and brewing them. It's been the best way to learn about things for sure.

I've only been brewing for 9 months so still have a lot to learn.
 
Agreed. And to answer your question about the hops and schedule in a piney/tropical IPA, I believe Sculpin is a 60/30/0/DH schedule, with an emphasis on Simcoe.
 
StonesBally said:
Here is what he is saying, though it is a bit technical. We can taste basically, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. This is really all we can taste. It is the receptors in our nose that differentiate those tastes on various levels. The nose can pick up something like 10,000+ different aromas, that when combined with the sensory information from our tongue create a unique flavor. Flavor and aroma go hand in hand. Have you ever had a cold, stuffed up nose and sinuses, and all the food you eat has almost no taste? That shows you just how important your nose is to flavor perception. So in short, I would say aroma is the differentiating component of flavor. You can experience aroma alone, but flavor and aroma go hand in hand, unless of course you just want to say your beer is sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or umami.

That's what I thought. It's just a semantic difference. It has no effect on how we brew b/c the perception is the same regardless of the terminology.
 
Well, yes, it's a semantic difference. But it shows that calling 20 minute additions 'flavor' additions and 5 minute additions 'aroma' additions is absolutely meaningless. You'll notice that this was the advice given in the first few replies to this thread, and it seems pretty clear that this kind of advice is totally useless, because it has no basis in the actual physiology of taste.
 
Gavagai said:
Well, yes, it's a semantic difference. But it shows that calling 20 minute additions 'flavor' additions and 5 minute additions 'aroma' additions is absolutely meaningless. You'll notice that this was the advice given in the first few replies to this thread, and it seems pretty clear that this kind of advice is totally useless, because it has no basis in the actual physiology of taste.

Except that everyone knows what "flavor" means, regardless of the technicalities of the process. And if you do a beer with 15min additions and another with 0min additions and do side-by-side tastings, you'll find a difference. You can call it whatever you like, but there is a difference. If you're suggesting that "15-minute-intensity-of-combined-bitter-taste-and-aromatic-qualities-addition" is somehow superior to "flavor addition", we'll have to agree to disagree. In English, customary and accepted usage is usually stronger than confusing and ultimately meaningless technicalities.
 
In this case, the customary usage is misleading. We don't need another name for a 15 minute addition. It's a bloody 15 minute addition. All we need to know is that earlier additions contribute more bitterness and less hop aroma.
 
Gavagai said:
In this case, the customary usage is misleading. We don't need another name for a 15 minute addition. It's a bloody 15 minute addition. All we need to know is that earlier additions contribute more bitterness and less hop aroma.

But if flavor is a combination of taste perception and aroma, and 15-min additions add taste and aroma, then why call for a change in a term that works for everyone but you?
 
Because it implies that if you make a beer without a flavor addition, it won't have hop flavor, which is clearly false. I'm sure that's not what you mean when you use the term, but I've heard new brewers speak in this way.
 
Because it implies that if you make a beer without a flavor addition, it won't have hop flavor, which is clearly false. I'm sure that's not what you mean when you use the term, but I've heard new brewers speak in this way.

Agreed. A few veteran brewers speak this way too. It might be convenient to use a word like "flavor" to denote a time frame you are familiar with through community speak. But it's also misleading and doesn't make it's definition necessarily true in the sense that it is used. Flavor results from every hop addition. Though, you would have a case for Aroma. Beyond 15/10 minutes, you're boiling off quite a bit of that intoxicating hop aroma we all know and love while not gaining anything further, beyond a few more IBUs, than you would at flameout. I personally find that a combo of a long, warm whirlpool steep and staged dryhop offers the best aroma.
 
One last question and thanks for the great info. What is the cut off between "early" and "late" additions? Is a late edition last 15 minutes?
 
In the way that our community speaks of it, anything 20 minutes or less is considered a Late" addition.

Middle would generally be about 45-25 min

Early would generally be about 90-60 min

But I would avoid restricting yourself by labeling these stages as Bittering, Flavor, Aroma, or believe that you must add hops during all three stages everytime you brew an IPA.
 
In the way that our community speaks of it, anything 20 minutes or less is considered a Late" addition.

Middle would generally be about 45-25 min

Early would generally be about 90-60 min

But I would avoid restricting yourself by labeling these stages as Bittering, Flavor, Aroma, or believe that you must add hops during all three stages everytime you brew an IPA.


Thanks. I'm seeing that a lot. Some say it's easy to divide it into three stages and then others contest it saying IPAs need balance so you should find a happy medium from start to finish.

I'm a fan of tropical hops with lots of citrus so I guess that means I should add the dominant "taste" hop early on 90-60 and I can continue to add it from 20 to 0 along with other hops in small increments but the primary bitterness is going to come from that early addition, right?

Actually, I was fooling around with Brew Smith and my IBU estimate is most impacted in hops I add from 90-60. 10 - 0 minute additions don't contribute barely any IBUs which corresponds to what I've been reading here.

So I'll fool around with that and read up on more varities and go from there.

This is a really informative thread!

:ban:
 
IPAs are all about the beauty of "unbalance". These are innately bitter, hop-forward beers. Balance is a horrible word to describe them in the sense that you sip one and say to your friends, "Wow, this has wonderful balance". ...Balance, however, is a wonderful word to describe an ESB. There is a problem with using this word for IPAs. You can balance gravity to bitterness with a 1:1 ratio, sure. You can also balance hop bitterness with hop aroma. But in it's purest form, balance is meant to describe the evening of sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness, etc., so that you don't have something innately sweet, sour, bitter, or salty... or hoppy, malty, roasty, bitter, cloying, astringent, etc. in the sense of beer.

Yes, primary bittering potential comes from the early addition hops. But the most dominating flavoraroma in an IPA comes from the dryhop. If you want citrus, load up on the citrusy hops in the dryhop. If you want mostly citrus with some pine, then maybe use 80% citrusy hops and 20% piney hops.

Whenever the wort is above 180 F, hop alpha acids continue to isomerize and contribute IBUs. Even when you add hops directly at flameout, you're getting more IBUs than you would think. This is rarely recorded by brewing software. But there are a few great breweries out there who are adding smaller 60 & 30 minute additions, which may only offer 40-50 IBUs, then overloading with hops at 0 to boost that IBU number beyond what you would think possible. There are also breweries like Russian River who add incredibly huge 90-45-30 minute additions and then also add a substantial addition at 0. Theoretically, you have +250 IBUs. Realistically, this number is more like 70-80. If you've ever tasted that beer, you would be amazed by how, after reading the hop schedule, it's not as harshly bitter as it would appear to be. IBUs are a tricky topic. We cannot sense higher than 90-110 IBUs on our palates. So by overloading or limiting the early hop additions, these breweries are looking at the flavor aspect that these early additions provide to the final beer instead of making it the "most bitter" or "least bitter" IPA out there.
 
But I would avoid restricting yourself by labeling these stages as Bittering, Flavor, Aroma, or believe that you must add hops during all three stages everytime you brew an IPA.

I think I've misunderstood those who have been posting against "flavor additions." It seemed to me the argument was that there's no "flavor" in hop additions, but bobbrews phrasing above makes more sense--it's a lie that so-called "flavor additions" (i.e., 15-min additions) are the only thing that gives flavor to a beer?

If that's what you meant, Gavagai, then I'm all for it. If that were true, the FWH would be useless. It's my experience that even 60min additions of some hops (Chinook comes to mind) sometimes contribute something to what we call flavor.

Sorry for being dense--it just made more sense when bobbrews phrased it that way.
 
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