Any validity to this Brewers note from Northern Brewer?

Yep. I do it with any beer I brew that has a late addition that I want more aroma on. Many of the big brewers do hop stands or whirpools up to an hour before chilling.

 

This is valid and a common practice. It's akin to whirlpooling if it's not the exact same thing.

 

Yes, letting the flame out hops ‘sit’ for a period of time is entirely valid. It will do exactly what Northern Brewer states: “extract maximum aroma & a little extra bitterness.”

This procedure is called a hop stand. You can read more here:http://www.byo.com/component/k2/item/2808-hop-stands

Cheers!

 

“I always thought the goal was to cool the wort down as rapidly as possible after its boiled and get it in a sanitized carboy and airlocked.” That is certainly what you should do for a batch of beer where you don’t add flameout hops.

As long as the wort is above 140°F it is a ‘hostile’ environment for bacterial growth. The ‘extra’ time of the hop stand permits more of the hop essential oils to ‘dissolve’ out of the hops and the result is more hop aroma (and a bit more bitterness from hop isomerization).

Conducting a hop stand is not mandatory. Feel free to add hops at flameout and immediately chill. You will still obtain hop aroma from this process; just not as much as you would if you conducted a hop stand.

Cheers!

 

I routinely chill my wort to 180F, then do a 20 minute whirlpool using Jamil's whirlpool attachment to my immersion chiller. I haven't done an A-B comparison to quantify the effect, but I like it!

 

What I've never understood is doesn't this increase the IBU extraction of your boiling hops? Is there really that much of a difference between conducting a boil for fifteen minutes and doing a hop stand at almost 212F for fifteen minutes? And what about your 15 minute flavor hops, won't they become more like a 30 minute significantly less flavorful addition?

 

Of course.

Boiling also agitates the wort, which increases extraction. I'm not sure if anyone has much data on hopstand extraction yet.

Brewing is full of tradeoffs.

 

“What I've never understood is doesn't this increase the IBU extraction of your boiling hops?” I would think that you would obtain a bit more IBUs from the hops you added at the beginning of boil. The additional amount of IBUs from these hops would likely be small since the hop utilization curve starts to flatten at the 60 minute mark and the wort will go below 212°F during the hop stand.

“Is there really that much of a difference between conducting a boil for fifteen minutes and doing a hop stand at almost 212F for fifteen minutes?” Well, what you are hoping for with the hop stand is that the wort cools below 212°F. The ‘issue’ is that the hop essential oils have flash points where the varying essential oils will ‘boil off’ at different temperatures. It would appear that Mike Hartigan has a good practice of waiting until the wort has chilled to 180°F before adding his flameout/hop stand aroma hops.

“And what about your 15 minute flavor hops, won't they become more like a 30 minute significantly less flavorful addition?” Again, the idea is that during the hop stand the wort will be at temperatures below 212°F and the ‘effects’ on the 15 minute flavor hop addition would not be equivalent to a 30 minute boil.

Hopefully some others will chime in on this discussion and provide their input.

Cheers!

 

calculation method I've done for simplicity sake is cut the hop stand time in half for hop stands up to half an hour and add that to the total boil time. So if I'm doing a 30 minute hop stand, I calculate my 15 min hop addition as a 30 minute hop addition, and calculate my 5 minute hop addition as a 20 minute hop addition. This gives me about a 10% utilization for hops added at flameout with a 30 minutes hop stand which is below what professionals usually see, which is generally 15-18% utilization. That kinda makes sense since after an hour their wort is still at like 200F while mine would be at 160F or so depending on outside temp.

yes because when you are boiling, hop oils vaporize extremely rapidly. Sub-boiling temps see far less vaporization and much more soaking in of hop oils into the wort.

Whatever hop oils are still left from the 15 minute addition could be retained if taken off boil. But this is a reason most pro brewers who focus on hop forward beers don't have any hop additions between 30 minutes through about 5 minutes left in the boil...

 

If you use hop bags, you can pull your kettle hops at flameout if you are concerned about this. I've never tried it this way though. I keep all the hops in there along with my post-flameout whirlpool additions. I feel like the best IPAs and pale ales that I have made have occurred since I adopted whirlpool hopping. But that and a nickel won't buy you anything.

 

Been doing it for years.

 

Seems to me...the 'hop stand' has more or less progressed from rests for x-minutes starting at 0" to rests for x-minutes after chilling to 180°F to rests for x-minutes after chilling to 160°F.

Some of the 'x-minutes rests' go long for an hour or so.
Me...it's ten minutes b/c my brew day is already long enough.

 

"What I've never understood is doesn't this increase the IBU extraction of your boiling hops?"


Yes; however, I read recently that chilling to approximately 170 and then hop-standing/whirl-pooling (for as long as an hour in some cases) will maximize oil yields.

 

That would apply to aromatic compounds retained (because they will not flash away as much at lower temps). But geocool was talking about IBUs, which come from isomerized alpha acids, which isomerize and dissolve better at higher temps (and don't flash away).