First Wort Hopping - anyone experience with this?

[boothbrew]

I read this article that discusses adding the hops to the brew kettle at the beginning of your sparge instead of at boil. They say this enhances the bitterness of your brew.

Anyone ever try this technique

If so, have you seen positive results??

Here is the link to the article I read.
http://www.brewery.org/library/1stwort.html

Thanks in advance....

 

[Soulive]

I've done it and I found it smooths/rounds out the bitterness. I liked the results...

 

[boothbrew]

I've done it and I found it smooths/rounds out the bitterness. I liked the results...

Thank you!

They also said it increases the overall bitterness.
Is this a considerable amount?
If so, do you reduce your total hop bill on beers you don't want to be extremely bitter?

 

[sittingturbo]

Thank you!

They also said it increases the overall bitterness.
Is this a considerable amount?
If so, do you reduce your total hop bill on beers you don't want to be extremely bitter?

You need to keep in mind, the longer your hops are in your batch, the more bitterness you will extract...

Are you planning on just adding them into your mash, adding to your sparge water, or will you stick them in a bag, and transfer them to your wort too?

From my understanding, you need to boil them to get the bitterness out of them...

So if you are only "steeping them" in your mash or sparge water. Then discarding them, you would in my opinion not be extracting much if any bitterness from them, you may however get a nice aroma/finish from them... But as soon as you boil your wort you will lose any of the aroma you just worked to get...

However if you were to steep them, then keep them for your normal full boil you should get more bitterness then in just a normal bitterness hop addition.

Be carefull, I realize everyone has different taste, but you still want to keep your bitterness roughly inline with you maltyness. Or at least I would try to keep it in-line.

If I was you I'd look at your desired beer style on the beer style sheet, and then use one of the online IBU calculators, and just calculate as you were doing a normal batch, and play with it from there.

 

[brewhead]

i've done it plenty of times -especially when i want to kick a hoppy ipa up a notch. it does significantly add bitterness to the total ibu imo - and does it better than say hopping in the mash tun. our club has a house brew we call daddy juice - basically a snpa on steroids. i have fwh'd that with cent by the handfuls and loved it. your taste buds may vary of course.

 

[Yooper]

You need to keep in mind, the longer your hops are in your batch, the more bitterness you will extract...

Are you planning on just adding them into your mash, adding to your sparge water, or will you stick them in a bag, and transfer them to your wort too?
So if you are only "steeping them" in your mash or sparge water. Then discarding them, you would in my opinion not be extracting much if any bitterness from them, you may however get a nice aroma/finish from them... But as soon as you boil your wort you will lose any of the aroma you just worked to get...

However if you were to steep them, then keep them for your normal full boil you should get more bitterness then in just a normal bitterness hop addition.

I think that you're confusing mash hopping with first wort hopping. If you're mash hopping, you only use the hops in the mash. If you're FWH, you add the hops to the first runnings in the brew kettle, and continue as normal. I do this fairly often, because I've read it gives a smoother bitterness. I'm not sure I found it to be true for sure, but I think it worked well in the Arrogant Bastard clone.

 

[MashStirBrew]

I have no experience with it but BeerSmith has the option for "First Wort Hops". Using EdWort's Haus Pale as an example. Changing the first addition of hops at 60 minutes gives you 35.5 IBU's and changing it to First Wort ups it to 37.7 IBU'S. If that helps any?

 

[Gabe]

I have been FWH for awhile now and I love the results. I seem to get that bitter bite that I wasn't getting with just a 60 min addition. My favorite hops for this are Magnum and Columbus. Something about these 2 hops always brings a smile to my face when I kick back a pint of the House IPA, smooooth!

 

[Poindexter]

I finally got a FWH IPA in the bottle. Dunno about the finished beer, but when I was checking hydro samples I had to do the FWH last. The hop flavor from that one in secondary stuck with me quite a while, every time. Bottled about a week ago. Keep an eye on Biermuncher'ss recipe thread in the IPA subsection, that is where my props will end up.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

You should get a smoother bitterness. Depends on the hops. Seems to smooth out the influence from cohumulone.

You will also pick up a gentle flavor from the FWH or Mash hopping. So if you are using something pungent it will show up in the flavor profile, though "gentler" than a regular flavor addition.

I made an experimental brew a couple years ago and used only Saaz hops in the mash (no other additions) and blind tasters (well they could see but I didn't tell them how it was made till after they critiqued the flavor) found it to be a beer plentiful in flavor and aroma. I used 600 grams for 40 liters think. Mash hopping is not a very efficient use of hops. You need way more hops to get the same IBU's as you would from a 60 min boil.

FWH on the other hand will pick up less flavor than Mash hopping but will also have a slight increase in bitterness. Like I said though the bitterness will be smoother due to a (suspected) reduced cohumulone influence.

I have yet to read any definitive science behind the reason mash hopping or FWH work, but it does seem to work.

 

[boothbrew]

Awesome.

Thanks everyone for your posts

I'm going to give this a try on my next pale ale...