Crystal as a bittering hop

[cincybrewer]

I'm brewing a lemongrass wheat ale and I accidentally bought two packages of crystal hops when the recipe called for 1 oz of spalt for bittering (and 1 oz of crystal for flavor/aroma). Not sure if I'll be able to make it to the store to correct my mistake so would crystal also work as a bittering hop?

 

[cincybrewer]

I also have some left over mt. hood, pearle, and magnum in the freezer if those would be better for bittering.

 

[homebrewdad]

Crystal is not a great bittering hop, as it has a very low alpha acid number (this is what determines bittering) - Austin Homebrew pegs it as 3-5% alpha.

Then again, Spalt isn't a big bitterer either; Austin pegs it at 3-6% alpha.

Your other three have more bittering capacity (Magnum is a very effective bittering hop), but they are actually all noticeably above what you would have gotten from Spalt.

1 oz of Crystal is going to give you a little less bitterness than you would have gotten from the Spalt. Maybe use it, and perhaps a quarter ounce of your Mt. Hood. Without knowing the exact alpha numbers of your hops, that should get you very close. Or if you're fine with it potentially being a tad less bitter, just use the Crystal and move on.

 

[two_one_seven]

The pearle would be closest to the spalt. Magnum is a great bittering hop but would be too much in the recipe. Save the Crystal for the aroma addition.

 

[kingwood-kid]

Crystal is a pretty lousy bittering hop, but it's almost exactly as lousy as Spalt; so yeah, you can sub it in without changing the beer a whole lot. I would save the Crystal for another beer or use it as a dry-hop. Magnum is a great buttering hop and is next-to-useless for anything else, so I'd use that. About 1/3 of an ounce should get you in the same ballpark as the ounce of Spalt.

 

[cincybrewer]

Thanks for the feed back!

 

[woozy]

Crystal may be a "lousy" bittering hop but it is what the recipe calls for. So, if we trust the recipe, this will not be a very bitter beer. Assuming we want a beer of the bitterness the recipe intends, it is my understanding that you can replace with pretty much any hop with the same amount of total alpha acids. So if 1 oz of Crystal at 3-5% alpha acids can be replaced with 1/3 oz. of a hop with 9-15% alpha acid. Or 1 to 1 with Splat. It's also my understanding that whatever flavor a bittering hop has will be pretty much lost in the end, so it could be considered "wasteful" *not* to do this. Maybe.

 

[two_one_seven]

If I read the OP correctly it calls for Spalt. If I were replacing the Spalt in this recipe then personally I would go with one that has similar characteristics (Pearle). Hops are more than AAU's, even when used for bittering there flavor components that are carried through to the finished beer.