SMaSH Hops Trials

[Maverick986]

I'm working on a 1gal SMaSH recipe to try out different hops, and looking around most recipes appear to have bittering hops at 60min. My initial thought was to skip the 60min hops and add at 10min, whirlpool, and dry hop. Is it a bad idea, or at least ill-advised to skip the bittering hops?

 

[Rodent]

all depends on what your end goal for each hop is

are you only concerned with flavor and aroma, or are you looking for the trifecta with those limited varieties that serve duty for bittering + flavor + aroma?

 

[Maverick986]

Primary goal is flavor and aroma. Se ondary is bittering, I'm not as concerned about that, though. I am interested in seeing how much wash bitters, how big of a difference would I see in bittering taste one hop to another? I know each will vary in the amount they bitter, but if I add enough batch to batch for IBU's to equal out the same, will there be that big of a difference in bitter flavor to test that?

 

[deadwolfbones]

If you only care about flavor and aroma, I'd just whirlpool/hopstand (or add at FO) and dry hop.

 

[shoengine]

You only need to boil hops past 20 minutes or so for bittering efficiency. Typically even for lower IBU beers I'll throw the bittering charge in at 60 so I can use less hops.

 

[Maverick986]

So, if I were to make, for example, a batch with Cascade and have the IBU's come out at 60, and make a second batch with Admiral coming out with 60 IBU's, with both hops added at 60min, would the bitterness taste be the same?

 

[LostHopper]

Have you looked at Basic Brewing Radio hop sampler brewing method?
Sounds like what you want. I've done a few and it's simple. No 60 minute boil.

 

[shoengine]

Bitterness depends on alpha acid concentration in the hops, so only if they are identical.

Bittering doesn't really take trial and error. IBUs can be reasonably predicted based on alpha acid percentage and boil rate. Keep your malt bill and mash schedule constant, and all you'll need to fool with is the <20 additions.

 

[RM-MN]

So, if I were to make, for example, a batch with Cascade and have the IBU's come out at 60, and make a second batch with Admiral coming out with 60 IBU's, with both hops added at 60min, would the bitterness taste be the same?

My experience with Cascade says no. I expected the flavor to be gone after a 60 minute boil but I could still taste the grapefruit flavor of the Cascade hops. The actual bitterness would be the same but flavor and perhaps mouthfeel may be different.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I'm working on a 1gal SMaSH recipe to try out different hops, and looking around most recipes appear to have bittering hops at 60min. My initial thought was to skip the 60min hops and add at 10min, whirlpool, and dry hop. Is it a bad idea, or at least ill-advised to skip the bittering hops?

I'm going to back up to the original question and suggest, like @LostHopper, taking a look at Basic Brewing Radio's "Hop Sampler" process. Recently, they have had an episode where they brewed three different batches while keeping the bitterness at the same "level" using AA% and weights.

I also brew a variation on "Hop Sampler" where I throw all the hops in for a hop steep (say 180* F for 20 minutes) vs their standard approach. Two different approaches, two very different beers.

 

[shoengine]

My experience with Cascade says no. I expected the flavor to be gone after a 60 minute boil but I could still taste the grapefruit flavor of the Cascade hops. The actual bitterness would be the same but flavor and perhaps mouthfeel may be different.

Flavor after 60 minutes? That is surprising. Did you put in any later additions?

 

[Homergah]

Flavor after 60 minutes? That is surprising. Did you put in any later additions?

Cascade can take a boiling beating, and still give a flavor contribution. Of course it will get slighter as boil time increases. I'm very surprised at the amount of flavor I get from cascade mash hoping, even after a 90 minute boil.

As to the same perceived bitterness from the same predicted IBU.
Different hops have different bittering profiles. Some are coarse, some are very fine. Your experiment will be awesome!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I just bottled my first Basic Brewing style hop sampler (as mentioned by LostHopper). I cannot say for sure how good it will be, but my notes from their video was:

• Warm 3 qts filtered water
• Add 1 lb DME
• Bring to a Boil
• Remove Heat
• Add Hops (amount based on aa%, around 6-7 "hop stand units")
• Stand 30 Minutes
• Cool in an ice bath
• Pitch 3 grams S-05 (I pitched 4 oz of WLP001 slurry)
• OG 1.060 / FG 1.010 / 6% ABV (I did not take any measurements of my brew)

I will also add, that I have been playing around with a process where you blend a hop tea with a malt liquor (I had good luck with Steel Reserve which is a malty 8.1 ABV beer with very little hop character). I am curious how the hop sampler beer compares. The hop sampler was very easy to brew, but has a ~4 week turn around with fermentation and bottle conditioning, where the hop tea has a 1 day turnaround time.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Hops do still retain some flavour after 60 minutes, some more than others. EKG is one that I find comes through particularly well (as does Pride of Ringwood). Also, the bitterering 'effect' (for want of a better word) is different with different hops at 60 minutes. Some are harsh, some are clean. It is probably due to the content of particular oils and how they interact with other things in the wort.

To the OPs question though, firstly - why SMaSH? You don't need a single malt to try different types of single hop recipes. Choose a malt bill that you like, and use it. No problem if you want single malt as well, but it's not needed. After that, you could choose a constant hop schedule (eg. 1g/L at 20 mins, 1g/L at 10 mins, 2g/L at flameout, 2g/L dryhop), then balance the bitterness across each brew using a 60 minute addition of a clean bittering hop like Nugget or Magnum to get all the beers to an equal bitterness. Something like Riwaka (delicious if you can get hold of it) will need way more bittering hop than Simcoe (for example).

 

[Maverick986]

Have you looked at Basic Brewing Radio hop sampler brewing method?
Sounds like what you want. I've done a few and it's simple. No 60 minute boil.

I had not seen that before, however it is basically what I was looking to do, since the recipe I planned to use was very similar, which I was looking to adjust. Basic Brewing mainly skips the bittering hops, and uses less water and DME, so it looks like I just have to decide on a batch size now.

Is it better to keep weight measures of the hops equal, or adjust weights bases on AA%? Most recipes I have seen appear to use the same hop amounts despite differences in AA%'s.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Personally, I'd be looking to keep the measures of each hop equal, and adjust bitterness with a 60 minute addition of a clean hop. The reason for this is to see how intense the contribution of each hop is. Remember with single hop brews that you are trying to learn what each hop brings to the table, so you can get a picture of how to use them in the future (what grain bill to use, how much hop to use, what other hops to combine them with).

 

[RM-MN]

Flavor after 60 minutes? That is surprising. Did you put in any later additions?

No late hops at all. This beer was designed to mimic one of the big name beers with no hop flavors to be noted. Mistake! He didn't like the flavor carried over, I didn't like the lack of flavor. I choked it down.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

This topic has been great for bring out a number of different techniques for experiencing bitterness / flavors that come from hops. One of my recent experiences (using "Hop Sampler"), with Vic Secret, was experiencing a harsh bitterness that others have described. The flavors were enjoyable, so I will likely try it again as a "hop steep" / whirlpool only hop.

Choose a malt bill that you like, and use it. No problem if you want single malt as well, but it's not needed.

With small batches, Vienna DME and Munich DME work really well for an 80% "brewers malt" / 20% secondary base malt bill. Apparently people are using Amber DME with "Hop Sampler" to brew amber ales with various hops.

Basic Brewing mainly skips the bittering hops, and uses less water and DME

While there is no 'bittering' addition, there are noticeable IBUs. For examples, see the "November 1, 2018 - IBUs vs Wort Gravity and Hop Stand Temps" eposide and brulosophy.com/2018/02/05/kettle-hop-vs-hop-stand-exbeeriment-results/.

With "Hop Sampler", it looks like their goal was to brew a six-pack of a 6%-ish APA/IPA with a minimum amount of effort. Nothing to measure with a 1 lb bag of DME and a 1 oz package of hops. One gallon carboys are a great size fermenter for a six-pack. It only takes a bottle to get the results from the experiment - so toss the remaining bottle(s) in the back of the fridge and sample one once a month.

I will also add, that I have been playing around with a process where you blend a hop tea with a malt liquor (I had good luck with Steel Reserve which is a malty 8.1 ABV beer with very little hop character).

Can you outline/explain the process in a little more detail (how do you make the hop tea? ...) This seems like a much more process than www.bertusbrewery.com/2013/03/dry-hopped-bud-light.html .

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Can you outline/explain the process in a little more detail (how do you make the hop tea? ...)

It is something I was playing around with and tried out on my homebrew club in January. I want to revisit this myself and work out some of the issues. I also want to compare this to a "Basic Brewing Sampler". I may have used too much hops (and I am not sure how to adjust for high AA% hops) but the biggest issue was too much hop "murk" in the beers...but that was more of an issue at the club where the pre-mixed bottles got passed around and the sediment got mixed up. I would be tempted to either 1) cold crash the hop tea to let it clear or 2) chill the resulting tea and let it clear and decant the clear beer into a pitcher. Option 1 might be better as you could mix the hop tea and beer right before tasting.

I played around with a number of ways to make hop tea, and I found that 1) if you did not boil (or at least add the hops to boiling water) I could not get a true hop flavor and 2) if I did not let the tea sit at least overnight, I never got a good aroma.

• Bring 20 oz of filtered water to a boil
• Add 1/2 oz of "flavor hops" and boil for 10 minutes
• Remove from heat and allow hops to steep for 20 minutes
• Strain out hops (I used a cold brew coffee filter)
• Add 1/2 oz of "dry hops" to the warm hop tea
• Cover and allow to stand 12 to 24 hours (~20 hours for this experiment)
• Strain out hops (used the same cold brew coffee filter)
  
• Mix with Malt Liquor at a 3:1 beer to hop tea ratio (I removed 10 oz from each 42 oz bottle and topped with the tea).
• Allow mixture to cool…or mix directly and sample.

I saw that Bud Light article and I am curious. I found that the hop flavor of Miller Lite conflicted with the hop teas and the resulting mix was worse that just the initial hop tea. Steel Reserve has a reasonable level of body and mouthfeel and almost zero hop aroma or flavor to compete with.

 

[Maverick986]

Thank you for all, the good info, I'm learning a lot here still. I think I've got a rough recipe put together based on combining a few I've seen around.

1 gal Water
1.25 lbs DME
1oz Hops
Omega Yeast West Cost I (still figuring out how much to use)

Heat water to less than boiling and add DME, mix well.
Bring to boil, boil 5-10 min.
Cutoff heat, and add 0.75oz hops - or - cut off heat and whirlpool hops and rest 20 min.
Cill to pitching temp, dump into fermenter, airate, and pitch yeast.
Once primary fermentation is complete, dry hop remaining 0.25oz hops.
Dryhop for five days.
Rack and bottle.

Does this look like I'm in the right track? I'm leaning toward whirlpool ing the hops over adding at flame out.

 

[deadwolfbones]

Yes, but I'd dry hop while fermentation is active to scrub some of the O2 you're introducing with the hops.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Does this look like I'm in the right track? I'm leaning toward whirlpool ing the hops over adding at flame out.

Your plan seems like a good place to start. I would say you want to throw in hops at hot temps to get some bitterness. I have not tasted my hop sampler yet to know how much bitterness/flavor/aroma the Basic Brewing process imparts. Basic Brewing add all the hops at flame out (no dry hops) and they seem to advocate for around 7 "Hop Stand Bitterness Units"...so 1 oz of a 7% AA hop (I am not sure if they would add 2 oz of a 3.5% AA hop...but they have added 0.5 oz of a 14% AA hop with good results). Some of this might depend on how much you want a "good beer" vs a beer that is balanced more to evaluating the flavor and aroma of the selected hop.

 

[Maverick986]

@deadwolfbones thank you for the idea, I'll adjust to dry hopping at day three.

@CascadesBrewer I'm not as concerned with producing a "good beer," as I am with testing flavor profiles. I have put two hop schedules into Brewers Friend that I am considering:

Option 1: Estimated 48.31 IBU (first thought, and leaning toward trying this time)
0.75oz - whirlpool starting at 160° (6.5 AA)
0.25oz - dry hop at day three (or four?) of fermentation (2.2 AA)

Option 2: Estimated 63.98 IBU
0.25oz - 15min (2.2 AA)
0.5oz - whirlpool, as in 1 (4.3 AA)
0.25oz - dry hop, as in 1 (2.2 AA)

My thought is to try going with a total of 1oz hops for each hop this time, and note the AA and IBU amounts, see how that works. Then if I'm not liking how things go, or just for the sake of trying, go and do this a second time and work out to have the same AA amt across each of the batches. I hadn't given very much thought to working out AA% for all batches to be the same until now, so any thoughts on this are welcome, especially if it looks like I'm about to do an excessive amount of work here.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I saw that Bud Light article and I am curious. I found that the hop flavor of Miller Lite conflicted with the hop teas and the resulting mix was worse that just the initial hop tea. Steel Reserve has a reasonable level of body and mouthfeel and almost zero hop aroma or flavor to compete with.

If steel reserve works, I'd stick with it. I mentioned the bud light article because topics on hop sampling topics are are generally incomplete unless 1) someone mentions 'dry hop bud light, 2) someone warns about the evils of oxidation , and 3) someone rants about precisely estimated IBUs .

Thanks for your insights into how you hop steep make hop teas. I've had a feeling that people get meaningfully different results (from vary bad to very good) because they each use very different processes. Your detailed descriptions helped confirm that for me.

edit: corrected for discussion on hop teas.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Thanks for your insights into how you hop steep. I've had a feeling that people get meaningfully different results (from vary bad to very good) because they each use very different processes. Your detailed descriptions helped confirm that for me.

I found this article after I was well into figuring out a better method than just hops in water:
https://beersmith.com/blog/2015/07/21/hop-tea-and-sampling-your-beer-brewing-hops/

The "Hop Tea with Malt Extract" process worked better than mixing with Miller Lite or just a water+hops tea and it is easier/faster than my process. I tried this process once and did not find that adding vodka did much. The issue was that without dry hopping over night I was not getting reasonable hop aroma, and I would not want a mix with malt extract sitting out for too long.

I am not sure if Mickey's has any hop character or how it would work, but those 12oz bottles with the screw off lids could be useful for smaller scale tests (and maybe good for the "Bud Light" process). I was using 42oz bottles of Steel Reserve. A bonus is that those bottles (plastic + wide mouth) are quite nice to use as a 42oz growler. I am tempted to try and bottle condition a beer in one.