Hopping "rate"

[MXDXD]

I'll be brewing an IPA tomorrow and I'm looking towards a somewhat equal contribution of all hops for flavor and aroma. Here is the hop bill (yes, its a bit atypical) :

Cascade, Chinook, Northern Brewer, Bramling Cross, Saphir.

I do have some FF7C that I could use as well, probably in replacement of Saphir, whose flavor profile could be interesting but might actually be too subtle to shine. I guess I could even use Willamette, Sterling or Sylva without screwing the global hop profile of the brew, even if Willamette and Sylva could end up being plagued by the same problem as Saphir.

If I pitch an equal amount of each hop variety, wouldn't a variety (mainly looking at Chinook here) overpower the others ? Should I "scale" my hops according to AA?

 

[skunkfunk]

How much do you have of all of that? Are you planning on FWH and 60 minute additions, cause if you put much of anything in early you're gonna have a pretty bitter beer.

 

[MXDXD]

Nah... I don't have the exact numbers, but its a 65-70 IBU recipe with 1.2 oz ounce of hops per gallon of wort.

 

[skunkfunk]

It's pretty tough to predict what a hops schedule is gonna taste/smell like in my experience. You either have to be pretty damned well-versed in hops (like, head brewer at Russian River level of well-versed) or have done it before to know for sure, as far as I can tell. So yeah, no real advice beyond that from me as I've not combined all of these particular varieties before.

 

[jethro55]

By no means am I an expert on this, but I have brewed enough to find out that the hop schedule is very important to realizing the hop flavor and aroma for any hop. FWH would be the exception according to many (myself included).

So if Chinook were in for the whole boil, it would not add alot of flavor or aroma.

But if you were to add them all at post-flameout (around 170 degrees for 10 minutes or so) then much flavor and aroma will result.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

Balancing that many hops it a challenge!

You might consider going light on the hops for the fermentation, and then adding hop tea when packaging. You could make a variety of hop teas and adjust the ratios using small samples until you find the balance that you are looking for. Then scale it it for your batch.