Hop combinations and why?

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

chiller

Well-Known Member
Joined
27/4/04
Messages
619
Reaction score
18
Possibly a double barreled question. From your own experiences [not cut and paste from the net from someone else's cut and paste :) ] ---- Traditional chilling and no chilling what combination of hops play well together and what characteristics do you observe. Does the chilling method make any difference? Which hops have you found that don't get on well together? Does the time of adding the hops to the wort either singularly or combined impact their good or bad points and using the same hop combinations does the chilling method make any difference

Steve.
 
Do you have a particular beer style in mind, because the amount of different hop combinations that do or don't work together and what addition times achieve is pretty much endless across all beer styles.
 
Well to pick a style, say a Best Bitter, hop combos like Challenger/EKG, Stryian G/EKG, Fuggles/EKG work well to my tastes, I don't no chill so can't comment on any difference between chill/no chill, both methods seem to produce great results for lots of people.
 
I am interested to hear from other brewers and what experiences they are having. I'm not asking this question for guidance for my own brewing. I'm not interested in what xyz brewer has said he/she has heard on another forum. Also I am being reasonably pointed in asking people for their results not what a google search throws up on the interweb.

I don't care about styles but interaction with different grains and or adjucts can be interesting.

Thanks for your response and similar to my own experience. I have also found POR works well with Fuggles.
 
My favourite that I make regularly is a rye pale ale with citra and mosiac, you can't go wrong with rye and citra really. I've got an English IPA with target and styrian G that's drinking really well now too.
 
Saaz and Summer worked well in a saison for me - kinda fruity spicy with the yeast.

I also like Galaxy + Ella in wheaty pale ales. Ella seems to take the tone down the passion fruit and give it a bit of an edge.
 
HPA use a nice flavour profile system made up of the four flavour characteristics, fruity (whether it be citrus or melon or stone fruits etc), Resiny (I like to think of these as earthy and woody flavours like rosemary and pine), Spicy (the pepper warmth that noble varieties are jam packed with) and finally Floral.

Some hops are loved for having complex characteristics like motueka (B sazz) because of its spicy and fruity qualities.

This type of thinking has lead me to some random hop combos that have paid off. I regularly pair noble varieties with fruity american hops to give a more complex spicy flavour to my american style beers.

Oddly enough I entered an ESB into a comp last year, which I paired Hallertau and EKG. The feedback from the judges was and I quote "did you just re-bottle Fullers?" I couldn't have been more happy.

Your questions about no chill vs chill are more complicated. I used to always chill but after my son was born I have sliced off non essentials from my brew day. I now save a stack of time cleaning and fussing about getting to pitching temp but it does carry a new set of challenges. I ran a series of test brews where I only hopped in the cube and then on other I didn't hop in the cube or dry hop at all.

I have found that the lack of chilling does kill the big aroma benefits of late kettle hopping, with my non cube hopped beers lacked the hoppy aroma I would have liked. That being said, it doesn't hold me back or prevent me from getting the desired result. If I'm brewing a style that doesn't need late additions, I brew as normal. If it does need late additions, I replace my 15min addition to be in the cube and anything under goes in dry. It's does mean I have to plan for the no chill, adjusting addition times and recalculating IBU's, but the beer hasn't suffered. I had 3 guys consisting of 2 other home brewers over on the weekend. I tapped a keg of american brown ale and it went down really well, they couldn't get enough of it! And funnily enough it was a saaz, citra and cascade combo.

The hardest part about no chill brewing and putting together hop combos is high AA hops, they can be tricky to get the aroma and flavour without a huge bitter kick. But as I said, it just takes planning and readjusting recipes to ensure you still get the desired effect.

Frankly I struggle to believe I'll ever use my chiller again.
 
Styrians and a few us hops like amarillo or cascade.
Challenger and styrians.
First gold and northdown.
Fuggles and ekg, ekg and styrians.
Spalter and tettnanger.
Fuggles and styrians.

There's a pattern developing here, I know.
 
It's a bit of an odd question as its the whole basket of ingredients that makes a beer sing or fart

I can make a (imo) great apa with citra, Amarillo and simcoe but it's not just the hops but the malt, yeast, mash profile, ferment temp, water additions etc that bring it alive. Make an apa mashed at 64C and then the exact same recipe mashed at 68C, everything else the same. The difference in flavour, mouth feel, aroma etc is profound. And that just one component of one variable. It just isn't that simple (or Shirley Temple's pimple per my spell check)
 
Hi Steve,

Good to see you are still around. :)

I may have mentioned this before but I find EKG and Cascade seem to get along quite well.

I am currently "experimenting" with simcoe galaxy and citra which is looking promising but at this stage I may have overdone the galaxy.
In the new year I will continue my trials, purely for research of course. :)

Cheers
 
manticle said:
Styrians and a few us hops like amarillo or cascade.
Challenger and styrians.
First gold and northdown.
Fuggles and ekg, ekg and styrians.
Spalter and tettnanger.
Fuggles and styrians.
There's a pattern developing here, I know.
And chinook with fruity hops - pine resin balances fruit salad very well and gives it some substance.
 
From a house grist of something like

%65 pale
%20 wheat
%10 Munich/Rye
%5 Vienna/carared/other
+ a 150g acidulated per single batch volume

Simcoe and any C hop and Amarillo
Chinook and any fruit hop
Centennial and anything
Cascade and Summer/Vic Secret/Ella/anything C
Calypso and Crystal
EKG and Fuggle/Styrian/Br. X/First Gold
Columbus and Zythos

gods.. list is endless.. it's not really the combo, but the amounts that really allows the punch, overdoing one addition can overpower the others especially with hops like Columbus and Simcoe, having a restrained touch can go a long way to letting the flavours meld to match the base malt... not that I really know restrained very well B)

dont do POR and anything noble :icon_vomit:

German Magnum/Warrior/ Hercules for bittering in just about everything..
 
I read in a book that combining noble hops and american C hops basically couldn't fail. So I tried Cascade and Hersbrucker together and was very happy with the result.
 
Back
Top