Hop forward

What were your fermentables, what were the actual times of additions, how and how long did you chill, what yeast and how much, what was the fermentation temperature, how long was the dry hop, bottle condition or keg, and how long since it's been in the bottle or keg? I think I got them all.

 

Yeah, that sounds like plenty of hops...so tell us about the process and recipe as mentioned above.

 

Just typed out the same exact question but then read and you have it covered.

To OP: 9 oz of hops should be more than enough but we have to see what else is going on in the brew.

 

full wort boil? good quality hops? what's your water chemistry look like (sufficient sulfates?)

 

Permit me to don my flame proof suit. OK, now I am ready.

Basic homebrewing books discuss three fundamental hop additions in the boil: bittering, flavor and aroma additions. In addition to these three boil additions, there is also dry hopping.

There is typically broad agreement that the ‘best’ time to add bittering hops is at the beginning of the boil. By boiling the hops for the full boil (typically a 60 minute boil) you obtain the ‘best’ isomerization of the alpha acids of the hops which means you get optimum bitterness from this hop addition. You can certainly also obtain bitterness from adding hops other than at the beginning of boil but the longer the boil time (e.g., 60 minutes), the better the hop utilization. You also want to make sure that you are obtaining a good rolling boil to obtain proper isomerization (an ‘active’ boil).

Now, here is the part with a bit of ‘controversy’: the flavor addition. I have a homebrewing book which illustrates that the ‘best’ time to add hops for a flavor contribution is somewhere between 15-10 minutes left in the boil. So, the OP added his hops with 30 minutes left in the boil. According to my homebrewing books a 30 minute boil is too long to obtain an optimum flavor contribution. The 30 minute boil will ‘drive off’ much of the hops flavor contribution. There are some knowledgeable folks on BA who feel that a 30 minute hop additional is OK and will provide a ‘good’ flavor contribution. I personally am still pondering this suggestion.

The boil hop aroma addition is at the end of the boil. My homebrewing books state that optimum hop aroma is obtained at the end of boil (flameout). While adding aroma hops with 5 minutes remaining in the boil will still provide some aroma, the 5 minutes of boiling will ‘drive off’ a fair amount of the essential oils (the compounds that provide aroma) from the hops.

Given the above discussion, my personal suggestion to the OP is to try a different hopping schedule for your next beer. If you are willing to do it, it would be ideal if you would brew another CDA just like you did but instead:

· Add you flavor hops (1 oz centennial and 1 oz simcoe) with 15 minutes left in the boil

· Add you boil aroma hops (1 oz ahtanum,1 oz simcoe) exactly at the end of boil (flameout)

Make all of your other hop additions like you did (bittering at the beginning of boil and dry hop at the end of primary fermentation (with 7-10 days of contact time).

If you are willing to run this ‘experiment’, please report back. I (and many other BAs) would be greatly interested in hearing your results.

I am of the opinion that the above change will ‘fix’ your subdued hop problem but like to the old saying goes: the proof is in the pudding.

Cheers!

 

I won't flame ya. That sounds like a good experiment for someone not satisfied with their hop results. I'm with you on the aroma at flameout. But honestly, with all those dry hops, seems to me that aroma should be just fine and an earlier "aroma" addition would help with flavoring. I dunno. Haven't tasted this beer at all. Maybe your tastes have simply shifted and you'd prefer a different style?

 

I have a chart on my wall titled "total hop utilization vs boiling time". Looking at it, your bittering addition is fine, but your flavor addition would have already peaked and dropped down to about 40% at 30 minutes, which by the way continues to plummet rapidly depending on how quickly you get the wort chilled after flameout.

At 5 minutes, aroma utilization is still peaking, but once again, if it takes even another 5 minutes to chill the wort sufficiently, you are looking at only 40% utilization remaining. At ten minutes on this table, the lines for aroma and flavor intersect at approximately 40% utilization; aroma on its way down, flavor on its way up.

I'm with Jackhorzempa on this one. Adjust your addition schedule for maximum possible utilization of each addition, and also remember to account for the time it takes you to get your wort chilled.

 

This is really interesting. At what point in the boil does it show each as having the maximum utilization? Is maximum aroma utilization as close to chilling as possible? Flavor 20 min from chilling?

It sounds like this graph is thinking in terms of time from "suffeciently chilled" as opposed to just flame out. Does it say at what temp the compounds are "locked in" to thier role?

 

The table shows 3 separate curves for utilization: aroma, flavor, bittering. The time is from 0 to 90 minutes. It states it as "hop boiling time". The text of the book it came from indicated that this includes time after flameout but before the wort is chilled sufficiently for the cooking process to stop. I do not recall if there was an exact temperature specified for when the wort is cool enough, but it makes sense to me that it's still cooking away at over 200 degrees until some rapid cooling happens.

The aroma curve is short, starting at 5% at 0, then 100% in about 6 minutes. It holds at peak for about 2 minutes, then drops rapidly to 0 by 18 minutes.

The flavor curve is wider. It shows about 5% at 0, then climbs more slowly, peaking at 100% at 19 minutes. It holds there until 22 minutes, then drops gradually to 0 by 42 minutes.

The bittering curve looks like a lazy "S", 15% at 0, up to about 25% at 20 minutes, climbing more rapidly to hit 90% at about 50 minutes, then slowly reaching 100% by 90 minutes, where the chart ends.

There is also subsequent material not on the chart that covers dry hopping for additional aroma, which is indeed more effective as it comes after primary fermentation is over. The chart is just for boiled hops.

 

Awsome info, thanks!

 

The curves that I have in my homebrewing book are different from the chart that bigjohnston is describing.

For my curves:

· Aroma utilization is 100% for end of boil (0 minutes) and rapidly decreases with boil time. For example, with 5 minutes of boiling my curve states you get about 40% aroma utilization

· Flavor utilization is 100% somewhere between 10-15 minutes; let’s say 13 minutes. For a 30 minute addition it states you get less than 40% flavor utilization.

Cheers!

P.S. I just got done bottling an American style IPA. I dry hopped this beer with 2 ounces of Centennial hops (13 days of contact time). The aroma that was coming out of my bottling bucket was absolutely glorious. If the beer tastes ½ as good as it smelled at bottling this will be a wonderful and truly tasty IPA.

 

Was the DH the only aroma addition you made to this beer?

I just started drinking an "American Special Bitter" that I dry hopped with 2 oz of centenial and the hop aroma is there, but its not the glory you describe.

 

“Was the DH the only aroma addition you made to this beer?” No, I also added 1 ounce of Centennial at flameout.

This particular beer is my house IPA. I have brewed it many, many times. It always turns out great but for some reason this particular batch had an especially good aroma at bottling time. Maybe this year’s Centennial crop is ‘extra’ good from an essential oils perspective?

I used to have a link to a paper that was presented at a conference (AHA conference?) that presented results on various aroma processes. In that paper the ‘result’ was that a combination of end of boil addition and dry hopping yielded optimum aroma. My link no longer works; I sure wish that I had downloaded that paper and stored it on my PC.

Cheers!

 

Jack and BG, care to say which books?

 

"flavoring at 30"...there's your problem...should be less than 15...and IMHO <10/5 min with aroma additions @ KO and cooled to 170*F.

Surprisingly enough, I am now drinking an IPA experiment that has NO dryhops and 1/4# KO/170*F aroma addition. It is a nice change of pace.

 

Really good points in this thread so far, but one thing I'm missing from the OP was what specifically he didn't like about the hop profile in his IPA. Not bitter enough? Not enough in the nose? It's difficult to give advice without actually knowing what he wants fixed.

Also sucks that he didn't get very much, that would really put a damper on finding out what he's trying to accomplish.

My advice would be brew the recipe again, or something close, and actually have enough of it to know SPECIFICALLY what the problem is- until then, while the advice on here is good, he won't know what the actual problem with that particular beer was.

 

If that is the chart I am thinking of, it is a vast overgeneralization.

http://www.brewsupplies.com/hop_characteristics.htm

 

I too am curious.
What hop presence in the finished product was OP expecting?

Recipe and process could have been spot on but just not to the brewer's taste.
Made me a few of them myself.