Hop tea??

[Gropo]

I was reading a Northern Brewer's recipe for an IIPA, and they call for boiling the wort and hops in separate vessels; then adding the "hop tea" to the wort at flame-out. What would the benefit of this be? Has anyone tried this and ended up with better results than just adding the hops to the wort during boil as normal?

 

[SchlazzGraft]

I've never done this, but you'll get better hop utilization since you'll be boiling em in a lower gravity liquid. For a IIPA, this would definitely help cut down on the obscene amount of hops needed.

 

[Denny]

I've tried making hop tea several times. The best it ever turned out was disgusting.

 

[Gropo]

I'm probably thinking of this in completely the wrong way, but I almost envision brewing as similar to a chef building and building upon the flavors of a good sauce. It just can't be the same if you simmer all the ingredients in separate pans.

 

[zepolmot]

I'm with schlazz. To me this just sounds like a way to get the hop bitterness you're after more efficiently by extracting in water (SG 1.000) instead of the high gravity of the IIPA wort. I do agree that a soup with all the individual ingredients made in different pans would certainly not be the same as if they were all melding together.

Maybe look up the efficiency of hop extraction at different SG's and just scale up the amount of hops to be used in the boil?