Newbee questionss

SoulBrew · Nov 29, 2011

I've brewed two kits now, and I feel ambitious to start my own batch from scratch... I like a beer that's got a nice hop kick to it, I currently find three Floyd's alpha king to be my favorite beer. I enjoy its multitude of flavors you get with each sip. I received my order from fresh hops of 5oz of 5 different types of hops...(cascade, crystal, Golding, magnum, and zeus). I'm wondering is there a way to I guess expand my pallet by making like a hop tea to understand each hops characteristics.? Can u use honey as a priming sugar? What would be the sugar content of honey compared to table sugar, so that I get a comparable sugar ratio for fermentation? Last question, I'm a commercial refrigeration engineer so I have every means of making temps needed.. I was wondering if I could chill my wort faster than a water wort chiller by running freon or chilled glycol through it. would that be beneficial? And in what ways... thanks so much any answers are greatly appreciated... attached is a picture of my first batch of beer only after a week of bottle conditioning. Needs maybe another week for full carbonation, tasted pretty good already though

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hopsalot · Nov 29, 2011

im my experience, when i was using a glycol chiller to chill wort, it did not work as well as I had planned. This was a unit made to chill room temp beer to serving temp, so roughly 80*F to lets say 36-42*F. When chilling form 212*F to 60*F, the compressor did not have enough time chill the glycol, by the tim eit came out of the copper coil submerged, forcing it to work much harder and would actully trip my breaker

dawgmatic · Nov 29, 2011

hops tea you can totally do, however I am not sure if you will be able to notice differences simply through making several batches of tea. Hops impart their flavors through the boil. As you have probably heard by now, adding hops at the beginning releases the alpha acids into the beer creating the bitterness, but the boil tends to destroy the aromas. Adding them at the end releases those aromas and flavors without the bitterness. So depending on how long you brew your tea, you will get different results with each set of hops. If you want to experiment with different hops, performing several SMaSH (Single Malt and Single Hop) recipes could be the way to go. This is a good way to get a feel for the hops before you take the plunge into creating your own recipes. Perhaps you can start a 5 gallon and break it up into 1 gallon batches. You'll need some gallon jugs first though, and airlocks for them all. But its not necessary, you don't need to be in any hurry. You have the rest of your life to figure this stuff out.

As for the honey conversion, read this article.
Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - Brew Wizard - What are the guidelines when substituting honey for sugar in a recipe?

Welcome to the forum :mug:

SoulBrew · Nov 29, 2011

Great info dawgmatic thanks...

H-ost · Nov 29, 2011

I have heard of people making hop teas to better understand the flavors certain varieties will impart. Then, it is just math to understand how much of and when you need to add them to get the bitterness.

If you can use something other than water to run through your chiller to cool your wort and it is more efficient, by all means do it but just make sure none of it leaks into your beer.