Kettle Sour Impact on Hop Utilization

[NHBrews]

I'm doing a quick kettle sour prior to the boil for a tart farmhouse ale I am brewing. Targeting a pre-boil Ph of 3.8, I usually go down to 3.4-3.5 for Berliners/Gose so not super tart. I'm hoping to include some bitterness in this one ~25IBUs, but have concerns that hop utilization will be low. @Kaiser shows a useful chart from Brewing Science and Practice that shows the drop off in utilization based on Ph:http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/How_pH_affects_brewing#Hop_utilization (Humulone are the most prevalent alpha acids, so focused on those lines on the chart). Eyeballing this chart, I suspect utilization will be significantly lower at a Ph of ~3.8 vs a normal ~5.3 (scale on the chart is logarithmic).

Does anyone have experience with hoppy beers and low wort Ph? Thinking I may shoot a little high on the IBUs and see what happens.

 

[mabrungard]

I find that you don't need to worry too much about that loss of bittering. Remember, balance in beer flavor is typically the bittering that counters the malt sweetness. However when you sour, then your beer is becoming more like wine where it is the acidity that balances the malt sweetness. So you are transitioning from the bitter/sweet balance of beer, to the sweet/sour balance of wine. I recommend that you not try and recoup that bittering loss. Most sour beers are only minimally bittered. I've tasted some soured and bittered beers and they were terrible.

 

[NHBrews]

Thanks Martin, makes sense. I've heard the bitter and tart thing doesn't work well, so perhaps at a lower IBU it will be better anyway. I mainly want the hops for aroma/flavor, so perhaps I'll just do a whirlpool only targeting a bit lower IBUs.

 

[murphyslaw]

If you're an AHA member, check out this recorded lecture on the aha website from hombrewcon 2016: Hoppy Sour Beers: Taking the Bitter out of IPA, Michael Tonsmeire. He presented 3 beers that were made with the same recipe but the hops treated slightly differently and it make a very noticeable difference in the levels of hop flavor/aroma and sourness.

 

[Sourz4life]

Yea I'd go with on the lower spectrum of IBU's. I've never found bitter to work well with any sour. The flavors just do not work. Not to say its impossible I've just never tasted one that was worth anything.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Agreed with the above, limit your ibus to 0-10. Iirc all of the sours from tonsmeire were dry hopped at various points.

 

[NHBrews]

Thanks for the advice, I'll just move all the hops to a whirlpool (starting around 190), which should keep me below 10ibus. I'm not a AHA member, but may have to join to see Tonsmeire presentation, love his book, and have been meaning to join anyway