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Fat Bastard

Brew Cvlt Doom
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3 BIAB AG brews in. The first (a big IPA from my own recipe based on others) was no-where near hoppy enough. Plenty bitter, but not enough up-front hops.
The second (Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale) is heading in the right direction, but only after doubling the recomended dry hop addition. Number 3 was done to the same recipe as the first IPA but with the 5 minute hop addition doubled and split between 5 minutes and flame out (or element off in my case). I'm dry hopping it this weekend, with double the amount of Riwaka in the original recipe, but I suspect this won't be enough. I normally ferment in primary for 7 days, rack to secondary for 14 days, dry hopping for the last 7.

Tips, tricks and suggestions to buy a randall or Blichmann hop rocket gratefully accepted.

Cheers,

FB
 
Are you chilling?
 
This has worked well for me: http://www.mrmalty.com/late_hopping.php :)

Basically, you get some bitterness even from late hops. If you use enough late hops to get all the bitterness you want (with no 60min hops), so add like 100-200g hops at 10min, you can get pretty awesomely insane hop aroma and flavour.

Also helps to use super fresh hops. I've got some here, even though theyre 2009 season, vac sealed and in the freezer since day one, theyre incomparable to the latest 2011 season.
 
Are you chilling?

Yeah, through a 30 plate Mashmaster.


This has worked well for me: http://www.mrmalty.com/late_hopping.php :)

Basically, you get some bitterness even from late hops. If you use enough late hops to get all the bitterness you want (with no 60min hops), so add like 100-200g hops at 10min, you can get pretty awesomely insane hop aroma and flavour.

Also helps to use super fresh hops. I've got some here, even though theyre 2009 season, vac sealed and in the freezer since day one, theyre incomparable to the latest 2011 season.

Recipe follows below. Sounds like I should move some of the early and mid additions to 5 or 10 minutes.

Bongin Bongin IPA #3 (American IPA)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.073 (P): 17.7
Final Gravity (FG): 1.018 (P): 4.6
Alcohol (ABV): 7.17 %
Colour (SRM): 14.2 (EBC): 27.9
Bitterness (IBU): 73.6 (Average)

48.48% Maris Otter Malt
48.48% Pale Ale Malt
2.42% Crystal 60
0.61% Black Malt

1.4 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.4 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.4 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
1.4 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
1.8 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
1.8 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
0.9 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 20 Days (Dry Hop)
0.9 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 20 Days (Dry Hop)

0.0 g/L Whirlfloc Tablet @ 10 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 66C for 90 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 19C with Safale US-05


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

Cheers,

FB
 
Put more hops in :super:

Drop the 30 minute. Up the 5 minute to compensate for the ibu's lost. Then double your dry hop.

The aroma will be good then.
 
Put them in the keg.

This is not a personal 'I think youre wrong' thing Nick JD. I would like the OP to know that this needs to be done with caution. I have given up hopping in the keg for two reasons. For my attemps, the taste had both the vegetal & grassy flavours after a few days. I tried 3 times, but it just didnt work well. First couple of days it was great - except for the floaties coming through the tap... Then the grassy / vege flavours started. So I tea-balled them, same result, just less floaties. Then I took to removing the tea ball after day 2. The grassy flavours still came through.
Then I gave up...
May have been the hops I used? Chinook once, cascade another, other one I cant remember.
Now I just do a hop tea after cold conditioning. I get the flavours & aroma I am after without those undesirables. Last time I said this, someone said they tried it and it was underwhelming. So horses for courses. Try it.
More of a precautionary tale than a rule though.
mckenry
 
Personally, my thoughts are your hop amounts don't reflect a west coast ipa which is what I think your after. Bump up your 5min to around 3g/l and your dry hop 4g/l. I also agree double your 30 and move that to 5. One of my mate makes a killer ipa and he uses 360g of hops for a single batch. Don't dryhop too long past 7 days or you risk vegetal flavors. Dryhop warm not cold . A number of brewerys in the us also dry hope more than once the same beer. Good luck with batch 4.
Cheers
 
So I upped the hops as recomended and did this brew today.

Bongin Bongin IPA #3 (American IPA)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.072 (P): 17.5
Final Gravity (FG): 1.018 (P): 4.6
Alcohol (ABV): 7.07 %
Colour (SRM): 13.4 (EBC): 26.3
Bitterness (IBU): 71.2 (Average)

48.12% Maris Otter Malt
48.12% Pale Ale Malt
3.01% Crystal 60
0.75% Black Malt

1.4 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.4 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
5.9 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
5.9 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
2 g/L B Saaz (6.8% Alpha) @ 14 Days (Dry Hop)
2 g/L Pacific Hallertau (5.8% Alpha) @ 14 Days (Dry Hop)

0.0 g/L Whirlfloc Tablet @ 10 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 66C for 90 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 19C with Safale US-05

Total hop bill, including the yet to be added dry hops is 410g

The hop bomb at the end was 260g of B Saaz and Pacific Hallertau. It might not be the most efficient way of getting big hop aroma, but By Crom it was exciting. Furious frothing and it made the kitchen smell wonderfull! One thing I did not account for is the amount of water absorbed by 260g of hop flowers and didn't get as much into the fermenter as I hoped, so I added the difference into the kettle with the trub and hop flowers, brought it to the boil and let it go through the cooler. Unorthodox, bit should't be as bad as diluting the wort in the fermenter. With that amount of hops, it was like doing a sparge through a grainbed of hop flowers. Gravity from the kettle was 1.090 (!) and after the water bang on 1.072.

Will report back in a month after fermenting/dry hopping/bottling.

Cheers.

FB
 
I did that 10min IPA recipe with Saaz-D riwaka. Think I ended up throwing about 200g of pellets in the kettle in the last 10 minutes. I love hoppy beers and this beer is legendary as far as im concerned. It's just like nothing iv'e ever tasted. I'll be doing it again for sure!
 
Dry hop a lot in the fermenter after krausen has died off a bit (5 days).

At least 50 grams.
 
Whacked 50g of pellets (30g Cascade/20g Citra - or the other way around) in the keg, force carbed and drank it that night.

You don't get *burp* hops like dry hop in the keg and immediately drinking. It dissipates fairly quickly after 3-4 days, but that first few days is hop heaven.

My APA are usually 30m bittering and the veritable truckload at 10m - and they are hoppy and lots of flavour. But dry hopping in the keg - another league, really.

My newest (hopefully low abv%) APA is in the fermenter, and I'll be doing the same with that one. I upped the IBU to account for the extra FG, by upping the 10 minute addition (naturally :D ), it should be good.

It'll cop a nice amount of cascade in the keg, and on Sunday (hopefully) I'll be drinking it.

Goomba
 
Whacked 50g of pellets (30g Cascade/20g Citra - or the other way around) in the keg, force carbed and drank it that night.

You don't get *burp* hops like dry hop in the keg and immediately drinking. It dissipates fairly quickly after 3-4 days, but that first few days is hop heaven.

My APA are usually 30m bittering and the veritable truckload at 10m - and they are hoppy and lots of flavour. But dry hopping in the keg - another league, really.

My newest (hopefully low abv%) APA is in the fermenter, and I'll be doing the same with that one. I upped the IBU to account for the extra FG, by upping the 10 minute addition (naturally :D ), it should be good.

It'll cop a nice amount of cascade in the keg, and on Sunday (hopefully) I'll be drinking it.

Goomba
Get yourself a Hop Rocket and set it up as a randall. You know you want to.
 
Buy the hop rocket!! screw using it as a randal, randals are just a silly gimmick to use at a party or something :ph34r:
and they make your beer taste bloody awful if you dont change the hops every day or so.

instead, use the unit as god and Mr Blichman intended, fill it full of flowers and stick it between your kettle and you plate chiller. Hop back aroma is the best aroma of all. all the best bits of dry hopping, all the best bits of late kettle hopping and none of the weaknesses. All the other methods are nearly, but not quite as good.

Not much good if you want proper late kettle hop aroma for a pilsner or spmething like that, but for pretty much all other sorts of beer a hopback will do the job every time.

of course - getting a hopback AND doing all the other stuff will mean hitting all the possible bases.....
 
Dryhop warm not cold . A number of brewerys in the us also dry hope more than once the same beer.

Two questions:

Is the jury out on warm vs cold Dry hoppping?
I did recently enjoy reading a thorough explanation of hops and temperature from Thirsty in an old thread that Speedie started about "ferment hop VS secondary hop", and im not trying to go there but... I seem to go for cold and, because i like to taste the beer right through all stages of its maturing, getting an idea for the amount of exposure time for the dry hop seems easier when the beer isn't so young, turbid and green.

Also, would the point of a hopback be negated if im using an immersion chiller, by not cooling it imediatley after contact with the hops?


Cheers
 
warm dry hopping makes things happen faster - whether thats better or not I have no idea, I'm not a big dry hop fan so I,ll leave it to the people who are.

hop back - sorry, hop backs only work with a plate or CF chiller. hot wort hits flowers, dissolves out the aroma in a closed system where volatiles cant evaporate, then almost immediately the wort is chilled before the heat has a chance to alter the aroma compounds too much.

if you think about it, its like dry hopping "very" warm and "very" fast. without the chiller to supply the very fast part, its just overly complicated kettle hopping.
 
Ross showed me something he's having a look at getting in, which basically you stuff hops in it and put it at the top of the keg (rather than the bottom) to either serve bright cask conditioned kegs, or alternatively use as a sort of hop rocket.

I found that by whacking a tea bag with hops in the keg, it started massive flavour hit for the first 3-4 days of drinking and then mellowed out to an increased bitterness over time (about 4 weeks). Great example of a beer changing with age, but it still remained very fresh.

Either way, it's convinced me never to dry hop in primary again. 2ndary at the earliest and ideally kegging (which I plan to do with my currently fermenting pale ale - cascade in the keg).

Goomba
 
Wheres the Bongin? :ph34r:

Sadly, the Bongin refers to a bay, not any other thing!

Would I be wrong in thinking that a hop rocket/ hopback would also work as a filter to get rid of hot break?

Looking at the specs on the net, the Blichmann holds 4 oz of hops, in my recipe, the 5 minute addition was over 9oz. would the hop rocket give a similar effect using half the amount? Would I still need to dry hop?

I like the sound of it, and if it gives me better hop utilisation, I might be able to convice Mrs. ******* I should get one!
 

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