Where’s the juicy fruit?

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6thGoal

Stephen
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Just cracked opened a bottle of homebrew, my second batch in 3 months. It was excellent compared to the first batch, a pale ale. This time around I did an all Mosaic, DDH IPA.

I used 8 lbs. of extra light LME, 1 lb. Crystal 15L with 0.5 oz of Magnum hops for the 60 minute boil. Added 2 oz of Mosaic hops at 10 minutes and 1 minute. Five days after brewing I DDH with 4 oz. of Mosaic.

The batch fermented for 2 weeks and has spent 8 days in the bottle being conditioned. Based on the hops I expected more juice flavor in the beer instead I got something else. Here is a snippet from a reliable beer drinker: “pine winter melon dough caramel smell. Perfect carb with the slightest of slight fizz on the tongue. Soft toasted malt flavors with slight sweetness from malt. Balanced hop bitterness with a little spice and herbs going down. I agree not juicy at all but compares to a Sierra Nevada style ipa. I think it’s excellent. I’d drink it again!”

While pleased with the effort and his review of the beer, where do I add to get a bigger juice flavor with adding fruit to the boil? Should I have used more hops at the first addition?

Everything else about the beer seems spot on per the recipe but expected a bit more citrus/tropical flavor. Suggestions for next time?
 
To get fruity juicy flavors from your hops, you need to put more hops in your late additions. You get your IBUs from the first addition and aroma and flavor from the late additions. Dry hopping your beer will really amp up those big juicy hop aromas.
 
Yeah the aroma is wonderful, as expected. I’ll have to re-evaluate and try this recipe again.
 
I'm not a hop head, but I don't think of mosaic as being the most fruit forward hop.
I'm sure other folks could recommend more fruity hops. Citra? Huell Melon?

If you're going for more like a juicy NEIPA you're going to need to switch up the recipe considerably.

Happy hopping
 
Trial and error right? It’s a learning process, guess I was misguided thinking I’d get a bigger fruit flavor from this hop. The beer is still good bit tweaking is necessary if I try this one again. Thanks for the suggestions.
 
I would start by ditching any Crystal malt. Go all base malt and if interested in adding something more, go with Flaked wheat, oats or Wheat/Oat malt. Keeping the grain bill simple and relatively clean of any specialty malts, will keep the focus on the hops and the aromas+flavours the hops bring.

Mosaic is not juicy fruit " juicy " on its own. Combined with Citra, Galaxy, Azacca, Denali, Amarillo, Vic Secret, etc. will definitely result in fruitiness.

Don't add hops before the last 15-20 minutes of the boil. With 15-20 minutes in the boil, add a lot of hops. Once the boil is finished, quickly cool down your wort to or lower than 160F and add a whole lot more hops at this point. Steep/whirlpool for 15-20 minutes. Even if you do it manually, you will have to gently whirlpool for 20-60 seconds at least two times in 20-30 minutes, to resuspend the hops and make sure they have as much contact with the wort as possible. These things together will add lots of flavour to the beer, with less bitterness than you would normally get by bittering at 60 minutes. Juicier flavours are also enhanced by the lack of agressive bitterness and a water profile, to emphasize the sweeter, fruitier flavours from the hops.
 
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I would start by ditching any Crystal malt. Go all base malt and if interested in adding something more, go with Flaked wheat, oats or Wheat/Oat malt. Keeping the grain bill simple and relatively clean of any specialty malts, will keep the focus on the hops and the aromas+flavours the hops bring.

Mosaic is not juicy fruit " juicy " on its own. Combined with Citra, Galaxy, Azacca, Denali, Amarillo, Vic Secret, etc. will definitely result in fruitiness.

Don't add hops before the last 15-20 minutes of the boil. With 15-20 minutes in the boil, add a lot of hops. Once the boil is finished, quickly cool down your wort to or lower than 160F and add a whole lot more hops at this point. Steep/whirlpool for 15-20 minutes. Even if you do it manually, you will have to gently whirlpool for 20-60 seconds at least two times in 20-30 minutes, to resuspend the hops and make sure they have as much contact with the wort as possible. These things together will add lots of flavour to the beer, with less bitterness than you would normally get by bittering at 60 minutes. Juicier flavours are also enhanced by the lack of agressive bitterness and a water profile, to emphasize the sweeter, fruitier flavours from the hops.

This is definitely the route to take. Never been a fan of IPAs until recently and generally go for low IBU high flavour ones.

Mosiac I have never had come forward as fruity or juicy alone, though melony and if I do earlier additions (40+ minutes) piney. But mosiac with Amarillo is a killer combo (better than Amarillo alone) and I do it for my milkshake and white ipas, along with a 1/1/1 ratio of 2-row/wheat/oats.
 
So by ditching the Crystal L10, I will lose that sweetness that I taste now in the beer. Guess I have more learning to do, in exchanging ingredients. This was a extract kit, so the malts and grains were already included, the only addition I had to make was the hops. So it was my mistake not understanding all the characteristics of the Mosaic hop.

I did expect more juice, but honestly it turned out to be a good beer, but I could see this single hop beer being much more. However, I need to look at more recipes to figure out amounts of grains and malts to get started.
 
I thought knew what I wanted but I turned out nothing that I had envisioned. Again, that doesn’t mean this batch was a failure, as a single hopped IPA it dm still turned out nice. Maybe it moving forward too quickly without knowing detailed characteristics of hops that I was after. It’s a learning process. After this batch I have learned some new info that will help me in the fourth batch I put together soon.
 
Mosaic is a low oil hop. It won't make a juicy beer in my experience. You need high oil hops.
 
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