Hop Fu! IPA

If you find one close make sure to report back your finding and results.

 

I think the information about oxygen pickup probably has ~400X as much to do with the wins as the exact water profile. Just saying!

I visited Societe while I was out in San Diego a few weeks ago, they move everything around with CO2 pressure (no pumps post-fermentation)!

 

Care to post the recipe? I'm a bit lazy at the moment to look it up. Interested in seeing the malt/hop bill.

 

That's what I started doing as soon as I started kegging and my hoppy beers are so much better for it. Kegging up 3 IPAs this weekend and for the first time will be pushing with CO2 into the liquid out post through the dip tube and filling from the bottom of a purged keg. Usually I take the lid off and just fill it while opened.

OP 17oz of hops isn't a too much in an IIPA, and I have a IIPA that is getting 15oz, my 10 gals of IPA have 21oz.

 

CO2 purging is fairly standard in homebrew kegging operations...but, it isn't going to help a crappy recipe much.

If it's the recipe on pg. 68, then I think the hopback might be one of the keys.

 

Do you think the 3oz in the hop back is really making a huge contribution through the 10oz at KO and another 10oz of DH?

 

Well, let's put it this way, I've made a VERY similar beer without the hopback and while it's been very good, the missing link may well be the hopback. I guess I should disclose, that I just bought a HopRocket (@ Bell's of all places) and am getting ready for a test fire ...I'll let you know. Cheers

 

That guy has won a fist full of NHC golds.

That recipe has worthless 30 minute additions, how could it have won 3 times? [Sarcasm]

 

"That recipe has worthless 30 minute additions..."

I will ask Brad Smith and Stan Hieronymus and get back to you!

Cheers!

 

Look up the recipes in the IPA book by Steele. Count the ones that use 45 or 30 minute additions. Are they inherently bad? No, just another time to put hops in. You might get some different aromas due to glycoside formations. Looking for floral notes? Linalool goes up during fermentation from what I have read, due to the yeast working on the glycosides.

Some brewers are not after those notes in the beer and use early and very late additions. Most brewers might say "this is what works for me". It is all good, as it makes beer.

 

I'm tempted to get me a hopback.. I have a friend who has one, and man.. I love the idea of mash hops, hit it with some co2 hop extract for my IBU's and then pack a hopback for a hot hopstand, whirlpool chill, load up the hopback again, and run it through the hops on the way to the fermenter..

 

Usually ran through hot, not boiling, but just shy of it..

 

Yup usually run hot by being plumbed in between the kettle and the chiller. Works its magic by allowing the wort to remain in a sealed line. So hop oil gets stripped out of the hops by the hot wort passing through the hop back and are promptly sealed into the wort as it passes through the chiller. The volatile aromas can't evaporate while passing through the tubing / hop back on the way to the chiller. Much more effective (aromatically) than doing a hop stand at flame out temp in an open boil kettle. Kind of like searing the juices into a steak, but using tubing and chilling to instead capture the oils in the wort

 

I ended up being pretty disappointed with the amount of character I got from the hops in my HopRocket (as a hop-back in-line before the plate-chiller). Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made some great beers with it, but when I brewed a recipe without a dry hop I didn’t think it was any more characterful than simply adding a larger hop-stand addition. Alpine uses a hop-back for most of their beers, but not for Nelson (as they don’t have whole leaf Nelson Sauvin hops) and I for one don’t think that beer lacks hop character compared to Duet or Pure Hoppiness.

That "searing seals in the juices" thing was debunked 100 years ago too...

 

I admittedly have never brewed a hoppy beer with it in lieu of dry hopping. Nor have I ever brewed a hoppy beer with a hop stand and no dry hopping. I always dry hop, sometimes use my hop rocket, sometimes do a hop stand, and sometimes do all three. That aside, if you think that using your hop rocket added AS MUCH character as a LARGER hop stand, wouldn't that suggest that the hop rocket works more effectively? FWIW, I think the biggest limiting factor with the HopRocket is its capacity.

Whether it's real or not, I offered it as a conceptual comparison. Here is an interesting read about the debate though...

http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/cookingmethods/a/sealinjuices1.htm

My brew school course recently was going over refrigeration and explaining the similarities btw the way a boiler and a refrigerator work. Some of that was inspiration btw me enjoying comparing the chilling process of the wort to the searing process of a steak

 

Good thing it doubles as a randall and looks impressive

 

There were a couple of talks at the NHC that come to mind. The one by David Curtis showed that mash hopping does very little for IBUs. There was one where the guy did no hops in the boil beers, where he used a hopback between the mash and boil kettle, and then a hopback after the boil. I can't remember if he dry hopped, but those beers had great bitterness, flavor and aroma. I have been thinking about doing a beer using that technique this fall brew season.

 

It was a Pilsner I brewed with a 2 oz hop stand and a 2.5 oz hopback, it could have passed for a 4.5 oz hop stand.

So much hop aroma character is scrubbed out by fermentation, in IPAs I'm really just looking for the hot-side additions to provide bitterness and that "saturated" hop flavor that dry hops can't deliver.