Beat The Hop Shortage With No-chill.

[Quintrex]

Ok in regards to my experiment
There is a marked difference between the two beers as you may expect.

Some Crude un-carbed observations

No-Chill Hopped
The flavour of hops is higher than the other,
Bitterness is way too low, I'd hazard a guess that the hop additions have equated to a bittering time of about 15 minutes(the actual IBU's will hopefully be confirmed later).

Quick Chilled
Bitterness is spot on for what I would expect it to be based on promashes calculations, but doesn't have as strong hop character.

I'll probably just carb a couple of bottles of each up for taste tests and blend the rest together.

Cheers
Q

 

[Ross]

Quintrex,

Rather than mixing - Maybe get some Isohop & add until the beers come into balance (bitterness wise) - You should then be able to fairly accurately calculate the achieved IBU's from the quantity added.

Edit: I'll happily donate the Isohop if you can't obtain locally.


cheers Ross

 

[Quintrex]

Quintrex,

Rather than mixing - Maybe get some Isohop & add until the beers come into balance (bitterness wise) - You should then be able to fairly accurately calculate the achieved IBU's from the quantity added.

Edit: I'll happily donate the Isohop if you can't obtain locally.


cheers Ross

Mhhh Good Idea, I had thought of getting some to use it to balance it but I hadn't thought of using it to calculate the ibu's. So a set amount = a certain number of bittering units, cool.
Thanks for the idea and also for the offer, if for some chance I can't get some tomorrow, I'll give you a bell.

Cheers
Q

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Interesting - unfortunately, this bodes poorly for P & L Brazil's 60L of beer...

OK.. so now we have a (possible) clash between the two experiments done so far ... have to do a few more and start to look at stats

Both experiment seem to agree that you get good, and maybe better, hop flavour from a cube addition, so lets stop looking at that and just look at bitterness.

I'll do an experiment where I add an amount of bittering hops to a brew, at 90min so they are as utilised as they are going to get. Then I will split the wort and no-chill both halves, one with an amount of cube hops, one without.

That way we can analyse for bitterness and directly compare the bitterness contributed by the boil hops and that by the cube hops. Should enable us to tell exactly the boil time a cube hop addition equates to.

B = ibu from cube addition (this will be calculated)
A = ibu from 90 min addition only (this will be measured)
Y = ibu from the 90min addition + the ibu from the cube addition (this will be measured)

Y = A + B therefore B = Y - A.

Now the measured IBUs wont equate to the formulated IBUs in pro-mash or beersmith... but we can get the relativities. eg: if B = 0.2 x A then we just plug the figures back into promash and see what "time" we have to put the hops in to have the B ibus equate to 0.2 times the A ibus - then we know how to calculate for them in the future.

Out of interest, I may repeat the experiment with "late" additions of hops that don't actually go into the cube - to see if the dissolved alpha acids keep on isomerising and contribute bitterness.

Because I am going to try to get these things analysed for ISO rather than rely on taste, I will most likely use plain water rather than wort.. it wont give the same results, but hopefully the ratios will be the same so it will end up giving valuable data (and will take shedloads less time)

I'm not doing anything till I ask the lab guys if they will play... otherwise big waste of time. Next week.

Thirsty

 

[beers]

Thirsty, one thing that I think you will have to take into account is the time that it takes for the NC wort to cool. You would think that a longer contact time with hot wort will increase your utilization?

I did an Amber Ale awhile back & hopped it soley in the cube. I used my normal method of cooling - 30mins with the cube on its side, & then cooled (down to around 30c) over an hour. IMO I got an IBU equiv to a 15min addition.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Yep, should and will.

My cubes cool down over at least an 8 hour period, usually a bit longer to get all the way to pitching temps. Thats the method I will be using for the experiment.. cooling down slowly over the same period of time as a full cube

Interesting that you are getting a bitterness that to you, roughly equates to the 15 min addition that Q estimated. Kind of says that the vast majority of whats happening, is happening in the first hour or so - which makes sense, thats when things are the hottest, and we have all seen the isomerisation/degredation of alpha acids charts... not a hell of a lot going on under 75C anyway.

I will be immersing the smaller NC containers in a 20L bucket of 96 water - thats pretty much the temp my wort is when I transfer to the cube. So I will float the smaller containers in the large bucket and seal it up.. then they will all cool together at roughly the same rate a big cube would.

TB

 

[Polar Beer]

Right, good to see some developments here. I've got 2 of the 3 brews into kegs and conditioning. Drank the sample and I'm really quite pleased with the results so far.

As found in some of the tests, the flavour is more pronounced. The Ross summer Ale for for example, has stacks of it. As for bitterness, I think it's around the mark. Im not an expert here and I'll admit Im still learning the finer points of appreciation. But they all seem balanced at this stage.
Definitely the ones I have brewed before are less bitter then I am used to. Which is what I was aiming for as prior to this they have been far too bitter.

I did allow a little extra with the hops I guess, so perhaps that has made the difference compared to the other test here. I also shook the shite out of them every 15 minutes or so for 2 hours. Remember that in your test steps.

All up, results are tracking well. Will have all of these on tap for a party coming up at end of Jan. So I'll plenty of feedback!

Cheers
Paul

 

[Tony]

I still want to know "what hop shortage?"

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I'm with you Tony... no hop shortage for me either. Plenty of em and they are free.

Pure altruism on my part this whole exercise......

Actually, at the moment I am mainly interested in compensating for what I see as a loss in aroma and maybe flavour in NC brews, if you follow a traditional hopping schedule. Cube hopping seems to have potential for just that... but looks like it will add bitterness that needs to be planned for. I want to know what plans to make.

 

[KingPython]

The thing is for me and other partial, kits and bits brewers it will save me an hour or so hovering around the burner waiting for hop additions.

 

[Polar Beer]

Update time

Have been out in the garage tonight, toiling underneath my four tap font. It's a new addition and a massive upgrade to my formally one tap bar. But right now it's more of a PITA then anything else. Too much foam, not enough bubbles. Perhaps not enough line, over carbed, taps too hot, I don't know. Too many foamy beers consumed now to care. Anyway, that's another thread's topic.

Earlier on in the thread I posted that I had brewed up 3 batches with no kettle hops at all. So compelled was I with Thirsty Boy's long and detailed posts. It seemed a fantastically lateral idea. Pushing the still relatively immature No Chill method a little further beyond the norm, but somehow closer to common sense.

So with the beer now on tap, I can report my 3 batches of beer are bloody great. In fact, I would say the best AG I have brewed.
It needs to be pointed out that all my AG brews have been NC (and always too bitter) and these 3 make up batches 12-14 of my AG life. At this stage, Im sure I can only be getting better through practice. Never the less, these rock.

I am not a beer expert. I just like to drink tasty beer. Ergo; some uneducated tasting notes:

Ross's Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale: The bitterness is significantly reduced from previous attempts, a good thing as all others were far too bitter. Flavour much (much) more apparent. Delicious. SWMBO pleasing even. Will brew another for the Vic off season swap as it's a good example with only one hop.

Pillar of Stout: Put all 80g of hops into this and can definitely taste it. Nice balance though. Lovely stout. This wont last long.

Easy down GP: My first lager. Also the most trouble on the tap. Jury out at this stage but flavour is apparent while bitterness is low (as expected). Can't really call this one yet. Certainly goes down easy as the recipe suggests. Will leave a while and drink the other two.

In short, this was well and truly worth while. I would encourage further discussion and others to experiment on this topic. Especially keen to hear about how any lab ISO tests work out.
Hopefully others get the same positive results as me. The thought process is encouraging. Like NC-ing, it's a real 20-60L home brewer idea that doesn't just shrink an idea from larger scale brewing. Good one Thirsty.

Cheers
Paul

 

[reviled]

I brewed this in the weekend, now the plan is, to count the each addition as an extra 15 mins and get a fair whack of my IBU's out of the FO addition... Way I figure it, if this beer comes out at about 50ish IBU's, the FO will be working like a 15 min addition, if it comes out sweet, ill know that it doesnt... Ill update when I keg this B)

3.5kg NZ Pale
800g Rye
250g Med Crystal

60 : 12g Nelson Sauvin 11.4%
15 : 10g Northern Brewer 8.5%
FO : 15g Fuggles 5.3%, 13g Nugget 11.6%, 11g Williamette 7.5%
Dry hop : 15g Fuggles
Nottingham