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The only stupid questions are the ones you don't ask right?

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snarf7

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First year doing this. Reading the recipes you'll often see the hops listed like this:

0.5 oz Sterling @ 60 min
0.5 oz Sterling @ 30 min
0.5 oz Sterling @ 10 min
0.5 oz Sterling @ 0 min

That last one you drop in as you turn the heat off right? But how long does it stay in the wort? Until it reaches the correct chilled temp?
 
My hops stay in the wort until I bottle the beer. The main thing with a recipe like that is to get the wort cooled quickly as the hop oils continue to add bitterness until the wort gets below about 170F so if it takes an hour to cool that far, all your hops are bittering hops. By cooling quickly the last couple of hop additions add flavor and some aroma.
 
0 mins basically means at flameout, so yes, you drop that in as soon as you turn the heat off.

It stays in the wort until you end up kegging / bottling it haha. I've at least never heard of removing hops from the wort ever.
 
I have to disagree with your post title..... I used to be a chef and by that I mean I wore a white coat and babysat adults for 110+ hours a week....

But here..... All questions are good questions with 1 problem....

Ask 10 brewers the same question and you can get 15 different answers..

I use a hop spider but even before I did, you assume exactly what I have been doing for almost 20 years..

Hops go in on the schedule, they get "removed" after chilling.. Whether that's removing the spider, the bag, or some people filter them out with a funnel and screen..

Some people leave them in the trub until they rack to secondary or bottle as it seems RM-MN is saying he does.

They can't really hurt the beer as you have been told once you cool the wort the purpose changes. Early hops add bitterness, medium to late add flavor and end to dry hopping add aroma..
 
Basically homebrewing is all about what works for you.... What you like to taste and what you don't...

If you want to gold medal at the homebrew con that's a different ballgame but whatever you make will be better than at least 60% of what you can buy and if you are all grain even making a light American lager saves you a ton of cash these days.
 
I leave about a pint of wort in my brew kettle that has about 95% of my hops in it. Depending on the OG of the wort, I leave as much cold break behind as I can too. Unfortunately with higher gravity beers the cold break floats rather than sinks and I have trouble working around it.
 
The timings are until you have it chilled. So zero (or flameout) means drop it in at 212 degrees and remove it (with your other hops) before you put it in the fermenter. However.. sometimes people do a 'whirlpool' or a 'stand' so they chill it to 70 and let it hangout for 30 minutes or so. For me that is 30 minutes that my wort is exposed and could get infected, so I don't do that :) I've never heard of leaving your boil hops in until you bottle/keg, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. There are also dry hop steps but those are usually for secondary fermenters and typically IPAs.
 
I rarely use more than 3-4oz hops in a 5G recipe, pellets, everything goes in the fermenter like @RM-MN. I used to use a 10" double sieve when pouring from kettle to fermenter but I found it made no difference and was easier to eliminate the seive.
 
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