What hops pair best with bourbon/oak additions

[joyceman]

What late hops pair best with bourbon barrel aging, both for pale ales/IPAs & stouts/porters. Whats your experience combining late hops with BB aging?

Ive used EKG in the past with bourbon stouts. My bourbon oak dubbel had a minimal noble late addition and came out well. I was thinking about trying a rye pale ale, IPA or porter to be bourbon barrel aged and was considering american hops.

My inclination is to pair with a spicy or piney hops. Maybe columbus, chinook or simcoe. Citra, centennial and cascade seem like poor choices. Willamette, northern brewer or mt. hood seem like OK choice for an american stout/porter.

 

[KeninMN]

Northern Brewer's Bourbon Barrel Porter uses Chinook at 60 minutes and Goldings at 15 and 5 minutes:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-BourbonBarrelPorter.pdf

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

I personally don't think about hops when I am drinking a BB Stout. Are you looking for a dark IPA that you want to age in BB? I don't really understand.

 

[joyceman]

I personally don't think about hops when I am drinking a BB Stout. Are you looking for a dark IPA that you want to age in BB? I don't really understand.

Im looking to do a pale ale and an IPA both with bourbon oak aging. Im looking for input on late hops that mesh well with bourbon oak aging.

 

[m00ps]

I personally don't think about hops when I am drinking a BB Stout. Are you looking for a dark IPA that you want to age in BB? I don't really understand.

agreed. I was gonna say something similar. The hops shouldnt really make a difference apart from their bittering potential. If your barrel aged beer has a prevalent hop character (apart from these new dry hopped ones that seem to be coming out) something went wrong in the process

 

[TheMadKing]

I think what these guys are getting at is: hop character decreases with time and oxygen. Barrel aging is the process of adding time and slow oxygenation, so having much hop character in a barrel aged anything is generally considered mutually exclusive. That being said, I've had a barrel aged IIPA that was focused on Simcoe and you could definitely tell which hops were used, though I suspect that they dryhopped it again AFTER the barrel aging process.