Getting a good hop flavor

[San Jose State University]

For every batch I've made, I always add hops for the last 15 minutes of the boil (in addition to 45 minutes of bittering hops). However, while I taste bitterness, I don't taste much of a hoppy flavor, nor do I smell a hoppy aroma.

I know dry hopping is supposed to help significantly, but is there another way? During my brewery tours I've never heard of a microbrew or bud just dry hopping like that.

 

[Axegod]

You are doing it right:
Boil: 1 hr-> bitterness
boil: about 30 mins-> flavour
flame out/dry hop: aroma only.

Dry hopping or adding in the last few minutes of boiling will add a great deal of aroma. The aroma will give the illusion of bigger flavour, without bitterning the beer. The nose will "taste" the hoppiness - but not the bitterness. I suggest using more aroma hops and or changing the hop the last type in order to get more hoppiness. You can look at the type of beer you are doing and find the "correct" aroma hop at the end of the boil. (eg...an ale: fuggles/cascades, pilsner: saaz)

Cheers

 

[WOP31]

For a good comparison try out the DFH 60 min IPA or just about any smaller micro IPA. From what I have seen all most all of them are dry hopped. The DFH 90 min is a great IIPA that has a really good ballance of malt and hop flavor.

Cheers

 

[Dude]

Lately I've been doing multiple additions at the end and they are amazing as far as aroma and flavor. I do a big addition at 15, 5 and flameout. Great results.!

 

[WOP31]

Dude, I second the multiple hop additions. I have found that experimenting with many flavor/aroma combinations, that you can really tweek on the hop profile in your beer. Also using multiple types of hops can help increase flavor, instead of just trying to use one specific hop. I am huge on the 10-5minute addition, i really feel that it is one of the more important ones.
cheers

 

[the_bird]

Yeah, BIG additions in the last fifteen minutes. The more, the better. No bitterness to speak of, just tons and tons of flavor. Flameout additions (let them steep for a couple minutes before chilling) will give some real nice aroma, as well.

 

[zoebisch01]

Yup, that is the key, what has been said. I usually put my last addition in @ 2 minutes to make sure my hops are fully wetted (I use whole leaf strictly) and get exposed to the heat briefly. It is kind of interesting, hopping that is, in that with beers that showcase the hops you often end up matching and/or exceeding the bittering amount of hops in the flavor and aroma additions (seperately).

 

[INeedANewHobby]

Hop utilization, mainly the amount of alpha acids that get dissolved into to wort during the boil, depend on two things: 1) The amount of time they are in the boil, and 2) The Specific Gravity (SG) of the wort in the boil.

Pretty much all recipes have the time listed of how long the hops should be in the boil (Ex: 1oz of Chinook for 60 mins, etc). But a lot of recipes, especially kits, don't take into account the SG of the wort when your adding the hops and the higher the gravity of the wort the less utilization you get. For the same recipe, if your boiling 2.5 gallons of wort and topping up with water to 5 gallons afterwards, the gravity is a LOT higher during the boil than it would be if you were boiling the entire 5 gallons at once. For example, if your making a beer that should come out with an OG of 1.040, when your done with the boil of 5 gallons you should have wort that is 1.040. However if your only boiling 2.5 gallons, you should come out with wort that is 1.080 which will be 1.040 once you had the other 2.5 gallons of water and that's a big difference in SG during the boil when you're adding the hops.

After my recent "Eureka" moment of this very subject when I was scratching my head wondering why my English Brown Ale was a lot more bitter than the extract partial boil was, I was curious and decided to let BeerSmith do the math for me and I went and changed nothing but the boil volume on that extract recipe and came out with the following:

2.5 Gallon Boil: 17.1 IBUs
6.8 Gallon Boil: 29.8 IBUs

Yeah, that made me go
My current system I do a full boil and start with the ~6.8 gallons to end up with 5. This using the EXACT SAME recipe and this caused the IBU's to be 12.7 higher than what they are doing a 2.5 gallon boil. That's a big enough that you can REALLY taste the difference.

So, back to your question. Yes, you can make adjustments on the amount of hops you use if the recipe you're making is for a partial boil and you're doing a full boil. Unfortunately, it's sometimes hard to know how much to adjust if the recipe doesn't list it's boil size and/or IBUs. A lot of recipes will list those two stats on them, but a lot of others and especially kits often won't. So you're left guessing on it.

My advice would be to plug the recipe into your favorite brewing software, and look and see if it appears to be out of whack for that style. If so, adjust the hops until it seems right to you.

Or if you like to crunch the numbers yourself, there are charts on hop utilization. That and much more on the topic can be found on John Palmer's site here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-5.html

 

[WOP31]

Along the lines of the wort gravity effecting hop utilization, you can combat that by not adding your extract till the last 15 min of the boil. That will make your bittering additions much more effective.

Cheers

 

[cubbies]

Wow, thanks hobby. I was recently having an issue regarding this. I concocted a recipe that I though sounded good, but when I entered my hop weights and boil time into the calculator at tastybrew.com, my IBU's were only coming out to about 6...and I was looking for about double or triple that. However, my boil size was only 1.5 gallons. If I bumped that up to three gallons, I was able to get up to 14 IBU's. Thanks for the info, that really did help me out. :rockin:

 

[Desert_Sky]

Lately I've been doing multiple additions at the end and they are amazing as far as aroma and flavor. I do a big addition at 15, 5 and flameout. Great results.!

yea add multiple additions at the end like he said, you will love the results

 

[INeedANewHobby]

Glad to help!

 

[zoebisch01]

Keep in mind that the component of bitterness is different from the flavor and aroma components. The AAU utilization relates to bitterness and not the latter two.

 

[San Jose State University]

You guys are great! I didn't think that kind of stuff even mattered. I'm going to take several of your suggestions and put them to good use for my next batch!

 

[Brewpastor]

Keep in mind that the component of bitterness is different from the flavor and aroma components. The AAU utilization relates to bitterness and not the latter two.

One approach is to begin at the end of the boil and work back to the beginning of the boil when writing out a recipe. This way you start by thinking about flavor and aroma, and therefore the amount of hops to get the aroma and flavor you want related to their freshness and oil content. The IBUs/bitterness of these then is secondary in consideration and only comes into play as you move back to the earlier additions and are considering bitterness you want over-all for the style you are making. This helps you get the HUGE multiple additions and stay within the balance of malt and hops you want.

 

[Desert_Sky]

One approach is to begin at the end of the boil and work back to the beginning of the boil when writing out a recipe. This way you start by thinking about flavor and aroma, and therefore the amount of hops to get the aroma and flavor you want related to their freshness and oil content.

Very good point Pastor.

 

[San Jose State University]

In the flame-out... shoudl I wait until the water reaches about 170 deg before adding the hops to avoid a tannic taste?

 

[Yooper]

No, you just pitch them at flame out. You don't get a tannic flavor from hops, that's grain. You can even boil hops .