Wild Women IPA Recipe Question

[mathiascote]

I'm planning to brew the Wild Women IPA recipe from the fourth edition of The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. After the wort is cooled, the instructions call to "strain out and sparge the hops". Are they suggesting straining the wort and then rinsing through what was strained out with a bit of additional hot water, back into the wort? I've never heard of doing that, and Google isn't helping. Is it maybe because they are calling for whole hops? (I was planning to use hop pellets).

 

[VikeMan]

Perhaps "Wild Women" sparge hops, but normal brewers don't. And personally I wouldn't do it just because a recipe in a book said so. You could ask the author, but he might be busy relaxing, not worrying, and having a homebrew.

 

[Minimal]

In the "Straining and Sparging" section under "A Review of the Brewing Process" the book discusses straining and sparging whole hops with hot water.

Is that strictly required? I'd say not, but I doubt it does any harm and I quess it's possible you might get a touch more hop character out of late boil whole hops by doing it.