Late hopping method

What do you plan on brewing? This method (also called hop bursting) works well for IPAs and beers where you want lots of hop flavor/aroma. The only downside when doing this especially for an IPA is you need a lot of hops.

 

Im new to home brewing, but I don't think its a good method for bittering...I late hop quite a bit, but I'm looking for that smoothed out hoppy flavor. After reading the article, I think they are suggesting to back off on the 60 minute first addition of hops and add flavors with late hop additions if you want a smoother ipa.

 

I think OP is looking more for the flavor and aromatic qualities of late hopping as he says he does not like to dry hop.

To OP: I really like using the hop bursting method but I can not comment on it vs dry hopping as I will always do both hop bursting combined with dry hopping. I feel its give a lot of hop flavor but as hoplover888 notes, it will not impart much bitterness (from my personal experience) so I always supplement it with a nice strong bittering addition.

 

Gordon Strong (master homebrewer and author of the BJCP guidelines) says that he actually prefers late hop additions instead of dry hopping in most beers.

From my own experience, it adds a wonderful amount of flavor and aroma - but considerably less bitterness. So figure out what you want your beer to be like and adjust the timing to reflect that...

 

Thank you sir for teaching me about hop bursting. My next beer will be heavily bursted, and named Tebuken. It will be all simcoe if I can get it, unless you have a better suggestion.

 

Gordon was the chair of the 2008 committee. He had some other well known homebrewers helping to write that. See the style guide lines .pdf. With 3 Ninkasi awards in a row, you can call him a master homebrewer. He is also the highest ranking judge at Grand Master Level 7.

 

I don't know what you're trying to insinuate... sorry if I didn't list his entire resume or references.

As I understand it he was the principal author of one of the past editions of the style guidelines, and as such an authority worth taking his advice and preferences into consideration....

 

I think he was just trying to point out that Gordon was not 'the' author of the guidelines.

 

Vikeman got it - not "the" author. Was stating the fact that he was the chair of the committee. You can see the others involved on the front page.

 

and you can rub elbows with many of them at various Midwest homebrew competitions. It's common to pair the new guys with experienced judges, so it's not unusual to spend the day picking the brains of Gordon, Jeff Sparrow, Tom Fitzpatrick, Randy Mosher, and others.

 

That's the whole point of hop bursting. ALL of the bitterness comes from the late hops. You need a ton of hops to reach your desired bitterness, but that ton of hops brings with it a ton of flavor and aroma. if you use a nice strong bittering addition, you need to reduce the flavor addition later to avoid overshooting your bitterness, which defeats the purpose of hop bursting.

 

I never new they had a term for the method. But I do it all the time. When I calculate a recipe, I always work in reverse order. I add all my late hop additions first, only then do I go back and add my 60 minute bittering additions to achieve the desired IBUs. I almost always do it this way as it makes sense to me. And this was a tip I got from Homebrew42 way back when.

But like mentioned above, you can add all your hop additions within the last 30 minutes of the boil to achieve the desired IBUs. The only trouble is that you have to use more of them, assuming your using low AA flavor and aroma hops. Just my 2 cents.

 

I am just giving anecdotal evidence from my personal experience here, I have late hopped the crap out of some of my beers and do not get the same bitterness as I would from an equivalent bittering addition in terms of ibus. I am not saying that no bitterness will come out of it but its a different kind. I like to have a beer (in terms of APAs, IPAs, and DIPAs) that has the sharp assertive bitteness up front followed by all of the fruity, piney, citrusy flavors on the back end. I find I can only get that when I hit it with a good bittering addition. Recently I have been doing a 1:1 bu:gu ratio for the bittering addition (with regards to the aforementioned styles) and ignoring the ibus contributed by the late hops and have been pleasantly surprised with how my beers have come out. All personal taste I guess.

 

I think we're talking semantics, here. Hop bursting refers to getting ALL of your bitterness from mass quantities of late hops. If you use a traditional 60 minute bittering charge, it's not 'hop bursting', as I understand the term (though it's a relatively new term that I'm not sure is well defined). It's simply using lots of late hops. Nothing wrong with that - I do it all the time.

 

Ken Schramm, Kristen England, Jamil Zainasheff, Jeff Renner, and Stan Hieronymus are also not chopped liver. Not all are here in the Midwest, but are well known in the homebrewing circles.

 

Not sure what you mean by 75% and 25%, but I've played with hop schedules for my 'house APA', being careful to keep the IBUs fairly constant and have found the difference to be quite remarkable. But that really comes as no surprise when you triple the late hop additions.

 

I did my standard German pils using all late hop additions of German Saphir hops to 30 something IBUs. I prefered it to my regular pils. Didn't have a side by side comparison, but I felt it had much much more mouthfeel and the bitterness was more "separate" in a good way from the malt, which could just be the placebo effect of reading the article first then brewing. I have sense done the same recipe with 3711 with, to me, great results.