more questions for the gracious experts

[idkid]

I have a couple of new questions, thanks to all who answered my last two.

1) what is the best way store a sealed bag of hops?
2) if a recipe calls for a smaller amount of hops than the whole bag, are the excess hops storable, and if so how do i store them?
3) how important is the specific gravity? how does it affect the brew, whats the purpose, etc.?

thanks again for the potential answers...idkid

 

[idkid]

that helped quite a bit...thanks

 

[the_bird]

I would only add that probably the most important thing that gravity tells you is when fermentation is done. If your recipe calls for a FG of 1.012, and you take a reading of 1.020, you know that there are a lot of fermementable sugars left in the brew. The problem is that fermenation can get stuck, thenn get unstuck - once the beer is bottled and there is no place for the pressure to escape to. Have you come across the term "bottle bombs" yet?

So, the FG reading is probably the most important. You can take a reading before racking to the secondary (your generally shouldn't rack until fermenation is done), although I've been in the habit of just taking a reading before bottling. If it's too high, then you know the beer either needs more time to finish fermenting, or you *might* need to re-pitch (pretty rare, actually), or you might have to do something else before bottling.

 

[cweston]

One more thing about gravity...

It's important for recipe design. The balance between malt flavor (higher gravity = more malts adding sugars to the wort = more malty flavor) and hops bitterness is one of the major factors in hjow a beer tastes.

So a Pale Ale with an OG of 1.045 and 36 IBUs of hops bitterness will be a fairly bitter/dry tasting beer. (It has a BU:GU ratio of .8, which is typical for the style.)

But brew a Belgian Tripel with those same 36 IBUs of hops bitterness, but this time with an OG of 1.085, and you're going to get a much sweeter, maltier beer because the ratio is so different (BU:GU = .42)