Feelin' Hoppy?

[crjohn02]

Quick education on hops, please. I have used two kits (English Brown Ale & Continental Pilsner) that specifically call out the Bittering, Aroma and Flavoring Hops. If I am making my own recipe, what is best to use for bittering, flavoring and aroma? Do I look for a high acid % for bittering, etc...? Any help would be great! TIA

 

[BendBrewer]

Higher alpha hops would require less hops to achieve the same level of bitterness than lower alpha hops. Hops do fall vaugley into each of the categories, Bittering, Flavor, Aroma but there is no hard rule and you are free to experiment with them as you like.

But obviously, some hops are more appropriate to use than others for each of these.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops

 

[unionrdr]

Use higher AA% hops for bittering mainly. But some bittering hops also have decent flavors as well,& can cross the line for flavor too. Low to mid AA% hops are mainly for aroma/flavor. You can goto freshops.com & click on hop variety descriptions. It's a real good list of popular hops with name,AA% range,flavor description,& what styles they are typically used in. That should help you start unraveling the bine mound.

 

[Dougan]

there really isn't any rules. You can use any hop for any purpose if you want to. Think of those applications as wise guidelines.

If you could tell us a general style of beer you want to brew we could give some do's and dont's as far as hop varieties go.

 

[unionrdr]

Well,as an example,an English ale would use Kent Golding,Willamette,or fuggles. Usually a combination of two. A Pilsner would use something like Perle,Saaz,maybe Columbus for bittering,Crystal is another good one. As I suggested,look at hop description lists like freshops.com,it's a real good company to deal with. A good read time after time.

 

[crjohn02]

Thanks for all the information guys! My first attempt of going out on my own was for a Summer Ale. I had Light LME and Wheat DME with the addition of some honey. I ended up grabbing Tettenger (4.8%), Fuggle (4.3%) and Liberty (4.2%) hop pellets and added some lemon zest at the end.