Our obsession w/ more hops, and commercial usage

Have you read "for the Love of Hops" by Stan H? He has the story of Marble cutting back on hops to get the flavor they wanted.

 

To me, all grain brewing is a pretty cheap hobby (at least ingredients wise), so I don't really think about the quantities of hops I'm using with all that much concern. I just want results, and pro brewers and their efficiencies aren't of much importance to me. If it takes 20 oz of hops for a batch, so be it (although so far I'm only up to 17, and it had great flavor and aroma).

 

I imagine that dry hopping in particular has so many variables, much like everything else in brewing, that it's a matter of finding the contact time, temp, fermenter geometry and method that get's you where you want to be. For the pros, a difference of 1% efficiency means a lot of money... for us, 50 cents in grain and hops.
Brewing, for lack of a better phrase, is such a fluid process, I can't imagine 2 different brewers on different equipment can produce identical beers. If they have identical equipment and processes... probably can. In the end... throw that stuff in there and see what you come up with. Pretty much my Brewing philosophy!

 

I believe you're correct, there are limited returns with more hops, dry hops in particular. That being said, an IPA that has 10% more hop aroma and flavor could be widely perceived as way better than one with less, so it may be worth it to the brewery to use 2x (or even 5x?) the hops to achieve that flavor boost.

Of course, this all depends strongly on so many variables that there isn't going to be one way that works best for every beer. I imagine that this "Triple IPA" loads up the malt too, so adding all the hops here may make sense versus, say, a "session IPA".

 

That is something that has been in the back of my head ever since I read it. I have been wondering about hopstands vs. chill fast as well.

I just pulled out the book. They went from 1.65#/barrel in the last 10 mins and 1.8#/barrel dryhops to .8#/barrel in last 10 mins and 1.2#/barrel dryhops. They think they got a better beer (more of the "right" flavors) with less hops (p.28).

good thread

 

Yeah, I catch your meaning. I just think they must have better equipment and know-how than we do. Not that we're a bunch of morons or anything, just that it doesn't help me much to know how to operate a badass commercial setup if I've never seen one and don't have plans to buy one. So given the average cost of hops per batch, the difference won't add up to enough dough for me to worry too much about it. Now if hops were $100 a lb instead of $10-15....

 

Hmmmm this hopstand vs quick chill thing intrigues me. There's only one I can think of off hand to use as a control and try this, and that would be my PtE-esque clone thingie. It had a 30 minute (theoretical, probably wound up more like 25) hop stand. Should I really just toss 'em in, mix well, and begin cooling instead? That baby made my top six list, so I'd be wary of fixing something that ain't broke. Thoughts?

 

Citra bomb from hell

• 0.5 oz Belma at 60
• 1 oz citra at 15
• 1 oz citra at 10
• 1 oz citra at 5
• 1.5 oz citra at FO, then cool to 170F and let stand 15 minutes
• 1.5 oz citra after 15 minute hop stand, while wort is still hot, let stand another 15 minutes
• 2 oz citra DH

Not sure how overkill that one really was in comparison to others I've made and other people have made. Doesn't lend itself as well to the hopstand/no-hopstand comparison tho.

 

Something I've noticed in the past few years is an increase in brewers' finesse when it comes to hops. Seems like in the mid-200's, it was just "dump in a bunch of hops, now it's an IPA." Now, I feel like there is more knowledge and precision applied to the use of hops. Specifically, different varieties being used for certain flavors, varieties used to complement each other, and the timing of additions.

Maybe I'm crazy and it's always been this way.

 

It would be interesting to know the process by which Wicked Weed is dry hopping this beer. Are they just dumping them in the fermenter? Using a hopback? Are they recircing them in the fermenter during the dry hop?

A lot has been made about getting "the most out of the hops" - perhaps they use this many to correct for a process limitation?

I think in that same study in "For the love" it was determined that a longer hop stand (I think it was 30 vs 60 minutes) made for better hop flavor.

 

I remembered a thread from a few weeks back where there was a discussion on this topic:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/need-some-help-with-my-hoppy-beers.172812/page-2

Based on this discussion, I decided that I would try chilling as quickly as possible for my next two beers and observe the results. An APA and a NZ-hopped IPA are in the fermenters now, so I'll know in a couple of weeks whether it made a difference.

A couple of other thoughts that might be relevant:

1. The best-smelling beer I've ever made was dry-hopped with just 3 oz. of Citra in a 5 gal. batch. The aroma was strong, and very crisp, distinct mango.

2. Several commercial brewers employ specialized dry hopping techniques that allow them to achieve better efficiency. I'm thinking Sierra Nevada's hop-torpedo, for example. And in the recent "Behind the Brew" episode on Alpine Beer Co.'s Nelson, the brewer mentions "recirculating" when dry hopping. Hard to replicate this on a homebrew level.

3. I think there's something to the idea of multiple dry hop additions. Not necessarily increasing dry-hopping amounts, but
taking your usual dry hop bill and splitting between 2 or more separate additions. There's a Brew Strong episode where Jamil Z. and Palmer discuss this at length.

 

Funny you should bring this up .. I myself am entering my second year of brewing but only about 6 months of all grain and about 6 batches of it. I have an ever evolving IPA/APA recipe that I have been increasing the amount of hops and hop types slowly through every batch. My last batch that is in the bottles now and not ready to taste for another week or so had 2oz glacier for bittering and 1 oz of cascade late boil then 7 oz of whole leaf hops in the 180 degree wort and let them steep for 45 mins. The mixture was 2 oz citra, 2 oz of cascade and 3 oz of mutlihead new mexico hops. Dry hopped with 2 oz cascade and 2 oz of citra. Now this is by far my highest whirlpool and dry hop additions so im REALLY curious to see how this tastes. My thoughts have been keep increasing the hop stand time as I did in this one to 45 mins. Im leaning towards 1 hour next time .. I dont think DMS is an issue with a 75 min boil and good fermentation. We shall see though. Next week I have a Stone IPA clone im brewing that im itching to fast forward time so I can taste it.

 

Vinny C with Russian River talks about multiple dry hops as well instead of one big one.

 

Matt, Stan did detail experiments that Rock Bottom Breweries conducted a few years ago when there was a hop shortage; one of the motivators for the study was to see how to optimize the use of hops (which were in short supply then).

The post-boil residence times studied were 50 minutes and 80 minutes. The four test cases were:

· Added one pound of Amarillo per barrel at the end of boil, with 50 minutes residence time

· Added one pound of Amarillo per barrel at the end of boil: 80 minutes post-boil residence time

· Added one-half pound of Amarillo per barrel at the end of the boil, with 80 minutes post-boil residence time, and one-half pound of Amarillo as dry hops

· Dry hopped with one pound of Amarillo per barrel, with no additional kettle additions.

Some of the conclusions from that Rock Bottom study:

· Longer post-boil residence (procedure 2) resulted in more hop flavor, aroma, and perceived bitterness than shorter.

· A combination of late hopping and dry hopping (procedure 3) resulted in greater hop aroma than longer late hopping. However, it appeared that there was a diminishing return for additional quantities used in dry hopping.

Cheers!

 

I have read many posts by BAs which detail an amount of hopping that seems excessive to me. I have been able to obtain BIG hop aroma/flavor in my homebrewed IPAs using a modest amount of hops in comparison.

A few years ago I brewed an all Citra hopped IPA using the below hopping schedule:

· Beginning of boil: 2 ounces of Citra (12.3% AA)

· At 45 minutes of boil: 1 ounce of Citra

· At end of boil (60 minutes): 1 ounce of Citra (no hop stand)

· Dry hop: 1.5 ounces of Citra (11 days of contact time)

After 2 weeks of bottle conditioning I tried my first Citra IPA; that beer was just too hoppy/intense! I actually had difficulty finishing that first beer!

I purposefully let those beers ‘sit’ for another 3 weeks before trying my second beer; I ‘aged’ the beers with the hope that the hop aroma would fade. At 5 weeks in the bottle the beer was drinkable. With another 1-2 weeks of aging the beer was great!

I read through the hopping schedule that @AlCaponeJunior posted for his Citra IPA and I almost gagged. How could that beer ever be drinkable!?!

My only guess is that I somehow achieve ‘better’ efficiency with extracting hop flavor/aroma in my homebrewery than others?

Cheers!