Choosing hops

I suggest tasting commercial beer that feature particular hops to get a feel for their flavor and aroma.

If you want an American IPA, then you'll want to use hops with big character. Good choices (that I have used) include Centennial, Simcoe, Citra, Chinook, Cascade, Amarillo, and Mosaic. Lots of the "heirloom" hops, such as Bullion, typically do not have the character that modern IPA drinkers are looking for.

If you want a British style IPA, the classic British hops include Challenger, First Gold, and East Kent Goldings. Typically, these hops don't have the punch of more modern American varieties.

Yes, you can use a hop bag for dry hopping with pellets. I prefer nylon bags due to my feeling (not confirmed) that muslin bags are likely to shed fibers.

If an IPA is handled carefully (i.e., minimal O2 exposure and cold storage), the dry hopping character can last for months (in my experience).

Cheers!

 

UOTE="Granitebeard, post: 5323824, member: 1170932"][/QUOTE]make an IPA[/QUOTE]

Must specify which kind as they are almost night and day to each other.
American IPA=proprietary hops in abundance...English IPA=more subtle with Kent Goldings and any of several med/high alpha varieties, and more crystal malt, and a less attenuative yeast (although not always) usually, imho

 

I agree with using commercial examples, however I find commercial hops used by commercial brewers sometimes do not reflect the same characteristics of the hops homebrewers have available. Personally I am never scared to try a new hop, and have only once made a combo I didn't enjoy. Cascade and Northern Brewer. Yuck

 

Get on the hype train and go Citra/Galaxy!

 

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread. You can also check out this helpful Mad Fermentationist post documenting the hops used in a variety of IPAs.

On some level, though, I think you have to experiment, there is only so far that theorizing or reading about it will take you.

For what it's worth, I just brewed a hoppy beer with Columbus, Simcoe, and Centennial, and I am very happy with that combination. It has a very strong grapefruit character, which is exactly what I was going for.

 

I like chinook or columbus for bittering and flavor, citra and columbus late and for dryhopping. Mmmm columbitrook.

 

Probably best not to try that combo then.....or a smart phone. Once you do it's hard to go back

 

For making your own recipes, I recommend you spend time looking at other recipes, brew a few recipes that seem popular/tried&true of styles that you like or think you'd like-- the averagely perfect IPA is a good example, or recipes from Jamil Zainasheff's or Gordon Strong's books. Then start looking at some ingredients you think you would want to substitute. "How would this taste with galaxy hops at the end of the boil, this yeast is supposed to be interesting, is there a difference between this maltser's crystal malt and that one's?" Make gradual changes to things you already have some familiarity with so you can assess the impact of the change.

You'll have a few opportunities to brew some batches with store bought pellet cascades and whole hop cascades before your hops are harvested, so one of your gradual change experiments could be an IPA featuring different types of cascade.

A word on hops. They are an agricultural product and we love them for secondary compounds they produce, various hop oils. These compounds will vary a bit year to year, and can deteriorate in processing, storage and transportation. Some big commercial brewers have an opportunity to pick the best of the best. What is available to homebrewers is not always the best. This seems especially true (in my opinion) of hops imported from England and continental Europe. Maybe it's the commercial guys hogging things up, maybe it is deterioration, or maybe I just haven't been lucky enough to get good ones (I have been disappointed several time by English hops, especially whole hops, which maybe don't preserve as well).

 

When I started brewing my own recipes, I'd check out other home brew kits and see what they used, then adjusted.

One of my favorite IPA hop schedules is
1 oz cascade 60 min and 45 min
1 oz chinook30 min
1 oz cascade Columbus citra 15 5 and FO

 

One of your original questions is how do we select hops. I can appreciate your line of thinking, part of homebrewing is not making what everyone else is making, it is hard to do that with an American IPA, and sometimes they are hopped with so many things that you can't quite put your finger on what you like. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I don't do a lot of IPA style beers but I don't see how my general strategy couldn't help.

From where you are I would first define the yeast, this is what I would define my flavoring hops from, aroma a little less so, bittering you can generally get away with anything. You then want to define your target IBU and find a combination that hits this. I find that the typical BU:GU +/- 0.1 works very well for a first attempt, but I do push this quite a bit once I know exactly the character is that I am shooting for.

On the flavoring hops I try to match the country of origin, then I try to match this with a profile that I like, generally some research will get you in the ballpark of what you are looking for (citrus, piney, floral, etc...). This will make the most guaranteed palatable beer, not because it is superior but because it is what our years of tasting beer tell us it should taste like. On the aroma I try to emphasize one or two primary characteristics from the flavoring, I don't care to get hit with every possible hop aroma that exists.

This next point may be something of some contention, but it works for me. I try to stay away from high alpha acid hops for all additions. These tend to give me a bitterness that I don't really care for and doesn't seem to fit, but your own taste buds have to be your guide on this one.

I will resist suggestions, I am all over the board and don't always follow others typicals.

 

@Granitbeard, do you wanna learn about hops?

If the answer is yes, then I strongly recommend that you buy the book:

For The Love of Hops: The Practical Guide to Aroma, Bitterness and the Culture of Hops (Brewing Elements) by Stan Hieronymus.

Cheers!

 

High alpha often correlates with high oil content -- even if you want to avoid these as buttering additions you may want to try them for flavor and aroma as late boil, whirlpool, and dry hop addition

 

I thought it was the yeast that did that!?!

Cheers!

 

You know these newfangled hops - the breeders can make them smell like anything they like.

 

Some bittering hops are just as good for flavor and aroma...some should be used exclusively for bittering, imho...I'm looking at you, Topaz