Step by step of my brewday: Doing a massive hop stand

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kal

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[I was posting this in a different thread but to avoid derailing I thought it would be better on its own]

Hi everyone,

Some say that you get the best hop flavour and aroma (as well as some added bitterness) doing a "hop stand" where you add hops at flameout and then let it sit for 60-90 minutes.

So I'd like to try and take this experiment to the extreme: Push the aroma and flavour as far as possible by *only* doing a hop stand. That is, not add any hops during the boil at all.

I think a 1.050-1.055 fairly standard APA (95% 2-row, 5% crystal) with its lower bitterness could pull this off. What I need to make sure of is that I get enough bitterness to not have the beer be overly sweet. The target is to get an extremely hop flavoured and aromatic APA that doesn't have much bitterness. I also need to make sure I don't overdo the bitterness. I don't think you can overdo hop flavour and aroma, but bitterness you can.

BYO has an article on Hop Stands in their March-April 2013 issue which was a good read:

http://byo.com/stories/issue/item/2808-hop-stands

Kal
 
Below is the recipe I'm going to brew later today. There's a full pound of hops added after boil at two times. It's part of a local APA competition we're having and I figured I'd try something completely different/new. According to Beer Tools Pro, my bitterness should be 0 IBU. ;)


Electric Hop Stand Pale Ale (batch #154)
10-A American Pale Ale
Author: Kal Wallner

Size: 12.0 gal @ 68 °F
Original Gravity: 1.052 (1.045 - 1.060)
Terminal Gravity: 1.010 (1.010 - 1.015)
Color: 7.53 (5.0 - 14.0)
Alcohol: 5.46% (4.5% - 6.2%)
Bitterness: No friggin' idea

Ingredients:
17.5 lb (89.7%) Standard 2-Row - added during mash
1 lb (5.1%) Caramunich® TYPE III (56.85L) - added during mash
1 lb (5.1%) Carapils®/Carafoam® (2.05L) - added during mash
1 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 m
2.5 oz (12.8%) Centennial (11.1%) - added end boil
1 oz (5.1%) Cascade (6.0%) - added end boil
1 oz (5.1%) Chinook (11.4%) - added end boil
1 oz (5.1%) Citra (11.1%) - added end boil
5 oz (25.6%) Centennial (11.1%) - added +30 m into hop stand
1.5 oz (7.7%) Cascade (6.0%) - added +30 m into hop stand
2 oz (10.3%) Chinook (11.4%) - added +30 m into hop stand
2 oz (10.3%) Citra (11.1%) - added +30 m into hop stand
12 g Fermentis US-05 Safale US-05 (fermenter #1)
WYeast 1056 American Ale slurry (fermenter #2)
1 oz (5.1%) Centennial (11.1%) - added dry to secondary fermenter
0.5 oz (2.6%) Cascade (6.0%) - added dry to secondary fermenter
1 oz (5.1%) Chinook (11.4%) - added dry to secondary fermenter
1 oz (5.1%) Citra (11.1%) - added dry to secondary fermenter

Notes:
19.5 lbs of grain. 1.25 qt/lb mash thickness.
Single infusion mash @ 150F for 90 minutes.
Sparge with 168F water for 1-2 hrs.
Boil for 90 mins.
Adding first hops at flameout (0 mins). Whirlpool by gently stirring every ~10 mins. Lid off.
Drop temp to 170F and add +30 min hops. Steep for 80 mins total then chill.
Aerate well (60 seconds with Fizz-X). Hydrate dry yeast for 30-60 mins until frothy prior to pitching.
Ferment at 68F. Dry hop for 7-10 days in secondary.
 
Water heating up in the HLT:

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16 oz of hops blended up (before I split it into 6 and 10 oz):

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With a pen for scale:

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That's a lot of hops for 12 gallons of APA!

Will it be too bitter? I have no idea. But that's what experimentation is about.

Kal
 
Mashed in and hit 5.25 pH with only the grain and the salts I added, so no need for any extra lactic acid to bring the pH down further.

About half way through the ~90 minute mash:

IMG_2160.jpg


The Hot Liquor Tank is set to 150F mash temp and the Mash/Lauter Tun is following exactly.

The wort is already fairly clear:

IMG_2170.jpg


Added 2 ml of 88% lactic acid to the 13.5 gallons of water left in the HLT to get ready for sparging. This bring my city water down to about 5.8 pH.

Kal
 
The 90 minute mash is done so the HLT temperature raised from 150F to 168F to perform a mashout. No valves or hoses are touched. The mash will automatically rise in temperature.

15 minutes into the mash-out, the HLT has already reached and is holding at 168F, and the mash has gone from 150F to 162F:

IMG_2182.jpg


The entire mashout-out took approximately 20 minutes and then sparging starts.


168F water is deposited on top of the grain mash in the MLT:

IMG_2194.jpg



Sweet wort coming out of the bottom of the MLT is collected in the boil kettle:

IMG_2186.jpg


The sweet work is perfectly clear after having been circulated through the mash grain bed (which acts like a filter) for 90 minutes.

Kal
 
The warmer the wort is allowed to stand at flameout for the hops soak, the more alpha acids will be extracted and the less hops aroma and flavor you'll wind up with. I'm glad that you're doing the second soak addition at 30 minutes. You might want to monitor your temperatures during the hops soak. If I remember the BYO article correctly, a lot of brewers will hold the wort at 170f for the majority of the hops soak.
 
If I remember the BYO article correctly, a lot of brewers will hold the wort at 170f for the majority of the hops soak.
Really? I was just going to let it drop expecting it to do "different" things as the temperature went down. I can certainly hold 170F (I just enter 170F in the PID and it'll hold). I have a couple of hours to think about this as boil is close to starting...

Kal
 
I was thinking of making a no boil hops APA but I was going to do FWH to get some bitterness and then a large flameout addition.

off topic but I don't think I'll ever get sick of seeing your rig in action.
 
I was thinking of making a no boil hops APA but I was going to do FWH to get some bitterness and then a large flameout addition.
Depending on how this experiment goes, my plan was to make an AIPA exactly like that (FWH + Hop Stand).

I think (or should I say, am hoping) that an APA can do with only a really large Hop Stand.

We'll see! Sparge is over... I'm heating up to boil now...

Kal
 
Sparging finished and I ended up with exactly 14.4 gallons of wort at the expected gravity. I took a break after sparging for dinner and to take the kids for a walk before starting the boil (now heating up).

Spent grain:

IMG_2200.jpg


14.4 gallons of 1.029/141F wort, ready to be boiled down to 1.052/68F:

IMG_2204.jpg


Kal
 
Vigorous rolling boil has now started and will continue for 90 minutes. It's mostly 2-row so a 60 minute boil would normally be fine, but given that the wort will be chilled lightly after boil when hops are added, I'm going to boil longer to minimize SMM/DMS as much as possible.

IMG_2212.jpg


Kal
 
Boil is over and I hit 12 gallon target bang on (at boiling it's actually 12.5 due to thermal expansion):

IMG_2213.jpg


Heat off, the hot break and vigorous boil have made the wort look like egg drop soup:

IMG_2220.jpg


6 oz of hops to be added:

IMG_2216_2013.jpg


Hops in!:

IMG_2222.jpg


This thick hoppy film quickly dropped. I stirred gently every 10 minutes.

Kal
 
10 oz were added 30 minutes after flameout:

IMG_2227.jpg


These will be steeped for 50 minutes, for a total of 80 minute steep of all hops combined.


Hops in!:

IMG_2228.jpg



After a minute the hops fall below the surface:

IMG_2235.jpg



I was surprised at how fast the wort was cooling off so the boil kettle was set to 170F to ensure it did not drop below. In this photo below you see that it's dropped to 174F after 39 minutes:

IMG_2232.jpg


Kal
 
Filling the fermenters:

IMG_2237.jpg


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Got about 11 gallons total. The massive amount of hop sludge in the boil kettle sucked up a good gallon of wort.

Hop Stopper showing the level of hop sludge:

IMG_2242.jpg


Reminds of me of the kind of sludge I get when I brew Pliny the Elder. Similar but different... the sludge this time was not as light. It was more compact.

IMG_2244.jpg


IMG_2248.jpg


All cleaned up:

IMG_2253.jpg



Heading to the bar for a beer (and to post this):

IMG_2254.jpg


So how does the wort taste? Very hoppy as you would imagine, but not a bitter as when I've made other extremely hoppy beers such as Pliny or HopSlam. The aroma is over the top.

Yeast has been pitched (WY1056 in one fermenter, US-05 in the other) so time will tell if the aroma/flavour subsides from fermentation.

Stay tuned!

Kal
 
Great thread! I haven't read the hop stand article yet, but you have certainly peaked my interest. As always, top notch posts.

One question regarding the hop aroma. Was it similar to the aroma of a heavily hopped/dry hopped beer, or was something a little different?
 
Yes, thanks for doing this experiment and posting about it!

An interesting future experiment (if you have the ability to conduct two boils at once [and the inclination, of course]) would be to compare the sub-180F flameout additions to the "more typical" additions at 20 and 5 minutes left.
 
One question regarding the hop aroma. Was it similar to the aroma of a heavily hopped/dry hopped beer, or was something a little different?
Similiar aroma to when I've done Pliny the Elder a few times in the past (with 23 oz in the kettle during the boil at various times). My Pliny recipe has about 8 oz at flameout but no stand. The Pliny wort tasted incredibly more bitter of course. This one I made here, not so much.

It's not really like dry hopping. I find that smells a lot different. Dry hopping to me smells more like what the raw hops smell like. Hard to describe, I'm bad when it comes to explaining smells and flavours.

Kal
 
Cool posts. Thanks for the pictures (and for them being creative and well shot instead of a blurry cell phone picture). I am about to do an Am. Barley Wine with lots of hops. I'm planning to do First Wort Hopping, then a 120 minute boil. There are additions during the last 30 minutes, but then 4 oz. for whirlpool (and 4 in secondary). I'll look back here for some updates when you get to taste this. Cheers.
 
One thing I forgot to post is how fast the temperature dropped after the heat was turned off.

I've had no experience with cooling times as I've always been a "lid on at flameout and chill ASAP" type of guy because (up until now) this is what I had read was the best thing to do to "lock in" hop flavours and aromas. (Similar to what you do with a Hop Back where wort flows through hops and contact time is minimal).

Here's what I observed in 12 gallons of wort (post-boil), ambient indoor temp of 65F. The lid was off at all times, the wort stirred gently every 10 mins.

00:00 - Upon turning off the power the temp dropped from 210F to 208F almost immediately.

01:00 - Added 6 oz of room temp hops. Temp dropped to 206F.

03:00 - Temp at 203F

08:00 - Temp at 196F

13:00 - Temp at 192F

25:00 - Temp at 182F

30:00 - Temp at 178F. Added second dose (10 oz) of hops.

30:00 to 80:00 - At this point I set the boil kettle to 170F to avoid going any lower. The temperature settled out at 170F and stayed there for the rest of the hop stand with the boil kettle element firing periodically. The firing of the element does not create a violent boil or stir, just enough movement to keep the hops moving around without me having to stir as much.

Kal
 
I've had no experience with cooling times as I've always been a "lid on at flameout and chill ASAP" type of guy because (up until now) this is what I had read was the best thing to do to "lock in" hop flavours and aromas. (Similar to what you do with a Hop Back where wort flows through hops and contact time is minimal).


I thought the reason to chill ASAP and quickly was to get a good cold break and to get the wort below the temp ranges that bacteria and mold like.

What kind of cold break did you get once you did start cooling?
 
What kind of cold break did you get once you did start cooling?
Good question! I actually did not think of paying attention to it as I forgot that it may be completely different. Lookin at my pictures now it's very hard to tell as none of the pictures show it and I tend to always ferment in plastic fermentation buckets.

Normally I do get extremely large fluffy cold break as I do quick 1-pass CFC chilling. Darn. I should have paid more attention to this. Sorry!

I did finding chilling from 170F to pitch (~65F) to be much faster. I open up my water line 100% and then adjusting the wort flow rate to get the final wort temp I want, and was able to chill much faster than if the wort was near 212F.

I'll have to see if the beer develops any chill haze. It could be that going from 170F to 65F very fast is enough of a temp swing.

Kal
 
What's the thought behind a 90 minute boil if you're not going to have any boil hops? Melanoidin formation/wort carmelization? Seems like you probably could have gotten away with shorter, and if this "no boil" hopping produces a nice beer it might be a good way to have a short brew day.
 
Vigorous rolling boil has now started and will continue for 90 minutes. It's mostly 2-row so a 60 minute boil would normally be fine, but given that the wort will be chilled lightly after boil when hops are added, I'm going to boil longer to minimize SMM/DMS as much as possible.

That is why Kal did that in his own words. :)
 
I recently did a similar experiment, except I didn't add any mash hops. I did a split batch, half of which (2.5 gallons) received 3 oz of hops held at 200F for 30 minutes, and half of which received 3 oz of hops held at 175 for 30 minutes. The 200 beer was plenty bitter, maybe 40 IBUs. The 175 beer was markedly less bitter, but certainly not cloyingly sweet—maybe 25 IBUs. The 175 beer had more hop aroma.
 
I recently did a similar experiment, except I didn't add any mash hops. I did a split batch, half of which (2.5 gallons) received 3 oz of hops held at 200F for 30 minutes, and half of which received 3 oz of hops held at 175 for 30 minutes. The 200 beer was plenty bitter, maybe 40 IBUs. The 175 beer was markedly less bitter, but certainly not cloyingly sweet—maybe 25 IBUs. The 175 beer had more hop aroma.
Thanks for the info! Your hopping amount of 14.4 oz per 12 gallons is similar to mine (16 oz per 12 gallons). Just different temps and time.

To be clear, I didn't add any mash hops either.

Both fermenters are still actively fermenting... I'll likely give them 2 weeks to finish up fermenting and allow the yeast a chance to clean up after itself and then rack and dry hop.

Kal
 
Gavagai said:
I recently did a similar experiment, except I didn't add any mash hops. I did a split batch, half of which (2.5 gallons) received 3 oz of hops held at 200F for 30 minutes, and half of which received 3 oz of hops held at 175 for 30 minutes. The 200 beer was plenty bitter, maybe 40 IBUs. The 175 beer was markedly less bitter, but certainly not cloyingly sweet—maybe 25 IBUs. The 175 beer had more hop aroma.

What kind of beer was it? I want to try this in an average strength pale ale but don't know how much hops to use.
 
It was a 1.053 pale ale. Based on my results, I think that a 30 minute hopstand at 200 is about equivalent in IBUs to a 5 minute addition (Tinseth), while a 30 minute hopstand at 175 is about equivalent to a 3 minute addition.
 
Gavagai said:
It was a 1.053 pale ale. Based on my results, I think that a 30 minute hopstand at 200 is about equivalent in IBUs to a 5 minute addition (Tinseth), while a 30 minute hopstand at 175 is about equivalent to a 3 minute addition.

Thanks, that's great info and I'll try out your calculations in my next batch.
 
UPDATE:

I tried a taste of this beer last night when I took a gravity reading (it's been 9 days since I pitched and it's down to 1.012, I figure it'll end up around 1.010 which is where I was hoping it would end up).

Normally I don't take readings until a good two weeks or so (depends on the beer/fermentation temp/etc.) have passed and I know it's done fermenting and cleaning up, but this one was a special case since I only added hops only after the boil (16 oz).

I was worried that it would be overly hoppy but it's actually the opposite: If I was to get it analyzed, the measured IBUs is likely in the 30-40 range at the most. It's really hard to tell. There's bitterness but it's extremely smooth with a ton of hop flavour and aroma. The best way to describe it is it tastes the way a handful of hops smells when you hold them up to your face. Not astringent or bitter, just tons of flavour.

It'll be interesting to see how it behaves over time, if it fades at all. The competition this will be entered in is in exactly 6 weeks. By the time I dry hop and keg, it should have a good 4 weeks in the keg carbonating and conditioning. It should be in its prime.

Fingers crossed!

Kal
 
Sounds like your results are in the same ballpark as mine, although it's hard to a make direct comparison because of the temperature curve on your first hop addition. I found the aromatics to be extremely floral, but I used a bunch of Amarillo.
 
I tried the hop stand method on my last batch and I ended up with an extremely hazy/cloudy beer. I dropped my IC in after flameout for a bit too long and dropped it down to 150 before starting the hop stand. I let the hops steep for 30 minutes and then cooled to 65. I'm thinking the fact that I dropped it below the target 170-180 caused the lack of cold break. Anyone else have any problems with lack of cold break using hop stands? If so, what temps should I be at to avoid this?
 
DAY 12:

Gravity has dropped to 1.010 - 1.011 (@68F). Beer was racked to 5 gallon glass carboys and 2 oz of dry hops added.
The hop flavours/aromas have not subsided as far as I can tell. Hopefully it'll stay that way.
At nearly 6 % ABV this beer teeters on the edge between an American Pale Ale and an American IPA, so it can take the extra hop flavours/aromas.

IMG_2531.jpg


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Kal
 
Any concerns that the hops aren't submerged? Or will they eventually fall to the bottom? Looks great & I can't wait to hear more about the results!
 
Any concerns that the hops aren't submerged? Or will they eventually fall to the bottom? Looks great & I can't wait to hear more about the results!
They are wet and they do tend to drop after a few days. That said, I also swirl them from time to time but they do eventually fall.

This is no different from any other dry hopping - it's not specific to this experiment.

Kal
 
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