After a search through the forum, I can't find the thread on which hop flavor lasts the longest/ages the best. Anyone have any leads?
I am not aware of any studies which document that various hop varieties have differing lasting hop flavor abilities. In my opinion it is how hops are utilized in the brewing process which can impact how long a hop aroma/flavor lasts in a hoppy beer. For example, it has been my experience that beers that heavily rely on dry hopping for their hop aroma/flavor profile fall off the quickest. An example of a commercial IPA that seems to consistently hold up well with age is Sierra Nevada Celebration. IMO, this beer holds up well since it does not heavily rely on dry hopping aroma for its flavor profile. If I were to brew a hoppy beer that I intended to ‘age’, I would utilize more hops in the kettle (e.g., late boil hop flavor additions and end of boil aroma addition) and less (or no?) dry hop additions. Cheers!
Summit and Apollo will stick around forever in your beer. I've done beers first wort hopped (e.g. I didn't expect any flavor contribution from the FWH, but hop was so potent it still shined through) with Apollo that still taste like weed several years out.
I have never brewed a hopbursted beer so I really don't know. I tend to use a fair amount of dry hops (but a lot less than many BAs that post about dry hopping) in my beers. I bottle my beers and it is my practice to consume my hoppy beers in less than 3 months At the 2-3 month mark the dry hop aroma has noticeably faded and the beer does indeed taste different at that timeframe. Hopefully some other BAs who have hopbursted will respond to your query. Cheers!
They tend to hold up fairly well as far as hoppy beers go. I don't have any science to back it up, but I think they get a little "flabby" before they lose all that hop flavor, though, so I now do a small FWH addition if it's not a beer that I know will be gone within 6 weeks or so of bottling. Using 100% of a flavorful base malt as the grist helps here, as well.
I've experimented with dry-hopping versus hop-bursting, and I've found that hop-bursting results in much greater flavor stability than relying on dry-hopping alone. With that said, even though the majority of my hop additions are late in the kettle, I do still dry-hop my IPA's and DIPA's.
Never hopbursted a beer I didn't dryhop also. I'm a believer in at least a token bittering addition, though.
Shot in the dark; I've never seen any study to this effect. Perhaps the main reason hops fade is oxidation. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some hop oils oxidize and fade more quickly than others, and therefore hops that are predominantly flavored by those oils would fade.
My hopbursted APA (House Pale Ale) continues to have the same hope aroma/flavor profile after 12 weeks (the longest it's lasted). The beers I dry-hop...not so much. However, I cannot say whether this is due to my process, or the fact that kettle additions stick around longer.
Peter, hop fade is indeed an oxidation process. You have an interesting notion of: “I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some hop oils oxidize and fade more quickly than others…” Maybe BA @Peter_Wolfe can provide some insight here. Also, maybe Dave (@telejunkie) might have some knowledge here that he can lay down. Cheers!
Definitely above my pay grade... Peter would be definitely be the man if such a man existed to talk about this topic.
Nope. I use hopbursting in lieu of dry-hopping, which I believe is the reason for the technique. Of course, I'm sure dry-hopping and hopbursting together would also make a tasty beer.
Not that simple. Many of the hop aroma component profile members (HACP; outdated clustering of oils and resins responsible for hop aroma and flavor), are oxidation products of one another. Sometimes when oils oxidize they oxidize to more stable compounds that are less volatile and have different aroma properties, so its not a simple oxidation equals fading. An example is oxidation of double bonds in humulene to epoxides and later, nucleophilic substitution reaction converting humulene epoxides to diols. When I used to synthesize the humulene epoxides in the lab (following purification), you would notice a fairly marked shift in the aroma of the epoxides relative to humulene.
While this is interesting, and I sometimes have noticed hops flavor changes with time, mostly I notice it just fading with time. Perhaps that is just because I am not tuned in to the aromas of the oxidation products (because I'm looking for something else).
Are you an AHA member? There is an article written by Mitch Steele in the Nov/Dec 2013 Zymurgy concerning Hop Bursting. In the article Mitch provides a recipe for a Hop Burst IPA which involves dry hopping with 4 ounces of pellet hops. Hop Bursting does not preclude dry hopping. Cheers!
I'm not a member. I didn't really mean to imply that it precludes dry-hopping, just that it's a technique with similar results, and that I thought it was common to use it in lieu of dry-hopping. However, a quick Google search leads me to believe this may not be the case. I know I read hop-bursting discussed in the context of replacing the dry-hop step...but I can't seem to locate the source.
