Best Bittering Hop

I recently had good success with 1.5oz of Warrior in my IPA. I actually used Citra for bittering in my first IPA, 1.25oz. Wasn't as bitter as my Warrior IPA but AWESOME bitterness flavor paired with my other hop choices (Simcoe, Sorachi-Ace)

 

I'm generally of the opinion that a bittering hop provides little flavor, if any at all. With that in mind, I tend to use what ever high alpha hop I have on hand to bitter with.

I've bittered with Citra, flavored with Citra, and dry hopped with Citra. It works well for all purposes.

 

Yeah, too bad you can't find it anymore. Heh

OP: Lots of people just use high alpha hops that tend to fit the the style they are brewing.

 

I think freshops.com still has some, if you're in the market.

 

Less so for an IPA, (I typically use columbus for bittering), but I use magnum as my bittering hop in a ton of my beers. Clean, and non-coarse bitterness works in lots of styles.

 

Doing a high gravity beer such as a DIPA with extract is tricky. You want to dry it out as best as possible, such that it doesn't become too sweet. With all-grain, we have the option to lower mash temperature to increase fermentability and lower the FG. With extract, it's not so simple. I might suggest that you add some table sugar next time you brew this type of beer. Up to 15% would be just fine in my eyes. Beyond that, you want to oxygenate well and pitch an appropriate amount of yeast.

 

As cmac said, dry, hoppy beers are just not particularly well-suited to extract brewing. Sweetness offsets bitterness which is why your beer is not that bitter, despite significant IBUs. Couple things for the future, move most of your hops to your bittering charge (at 60min), and 10 minutes or less to get both big bitterness, as well as big hop flavor and aroma. Your sheet indicates it, but did you do a full boil? A full boil will help with hop utilization.

ETA: What was your fermentation temperature? Remember, with high gravity beers, there's lots of sugar to ferment, and fermentation is exothermic under high krausen, and will increase the wort temperature 5-8 degrees above ambient.

 

I would wager that your fermentation temp probably spiked to mid-70s which is why the alcohol is so present. I've done several beers at the 8-9% range, and the key is to take it low and slow on the ferment.

As for styles that extract works well with, I haven't brewed extract in some years, but in my opinion, styles that are well suited with higher final gravities and less hop utilization. My best extract beer was a scottish ale, for example.

 

Did you do a full boil? If not your IBUs are way lower than DIPA territory as you are diluting from the physical maximum of 90-100 IBUs.

Also oxygenation of a "big" beer actually is best when you get more oxygen in than the atmosphere offers. That means only pure O2 setups can do the trick of getting you to ~12-16 ppm which is suited to the requirements of big beers... You can shake 12 hours in to help introduce more O2, though that is tricky if the yeast have been filling the headspace with CO2.

 

Kjyost wasn't suggesting all grain. He was suggesting full boils. With a sufficiently large pot and heat source (or two smaller pots and two burners), you can boil your entire volume, instead of topping off with water in the fermenter. There are several advantages to this. The advantage kjyost was referring to is that with a larger volume, you'll get better hop utilization. This is because there's less 'resistance' to the isomerization and dissolution off the alpha acids into the wort, which allows you to get higher bittering levels.

 

I would disagree with that source. The problem is that there's also a sort of 'universal limit' of about 100 or so IBUs. So let's say you load up the hops to get the max of 100 IBUs into 2.5 gallons. Now you top off with 2.5 gallons in the fermenter, diluting to 50 IBUs. (Actually it's more complicated then that, because one of the limiting factors is due to isomerized AA's sticking to yeast and dropping out, but the boil ceiling/dilution phenomenon in partial boils is real.)

Edit: just saw your refererence to a 4 gallon boil. So not as extreme as in my example, but still limiting if you're trying to get anywhere near the theoretical max.

 

DIPA's require plain table or corn sugar to get them to finish dry enough. Finishing at 1.022 is more like a barelywine.

You can do it with extract, just replace 10-15% of your DME with table sugar. Make a starter to ensure you have enough yeast, and aerate the shit out of it the best you can. As others have noted, full boils will also help with hop utilization.

 

I kind of like centennial for bittering- it'll give that bitter kick you're looking for with a nice piney flavor. I've also used Zeus (colombus) to good effect. However, I'm curious to give warrior a try...