IPA not as hoppy as it should be

[thisispants]

I've made a few IPA'S, and while they're pretty good beers in their own right, they're not the massively hoppy beers I was expecting and hoping for. I'm essentially smashing the boil with hops, with underwhelming results. What can cause poor hop utilisation?

 

[Dan Pratt]

What hops are you using low or high alpha?

 

[yum beer]

more details....what hops, how much, when......

water treatment?

 

[Phoney]

You didn't mention dry hopping. Try 4g/L for good results.

 

[Yob]

You lose aromatics isthe ferment, take to heavily dry hopping with a few points to go or in the keg if you package that way

 

[thisispants]

I'm only making 13L brews, my last beer was an all Citra IPA. I used 5gm @ 60m, 30gm @ 15min, 20gm @0 min, and dry hopping with 30gm for about 4 days.

Either I'm not using as much hops as I initially thought, or for some reason I'm not getting as much out of them as I should be.

No water treatment. I live in Canberra, I've heard our water is generally not too bad.

 

[2much2spend]

Try knocking out your 60 min and moving it to 20 min ( adjust to get the same IBU'S ) you do get more hop aroma, but as yob was saying stick heavily to the dry hop.

 

[Dae Tripper]

Extract or all grain? What size boil an SG of the boil are you doing?

 

[yankinoz]

I'll ask some possibly dumb questions, a bit like is your TV working because it isn't plugged in?

Are you disappointed in the bitterness, flavour or aroma? Going by your hopping schedule, you should have got good aroma and flavour, but the IBUs would not be up in mouth-biting territory. "Utilisation" normally refers to the bitterness contribution.

How old are the hops, were they opened previously, and how were they stored?

You didn't use a scale bought from K-Mart, Homemaker brand, did you?

Could it be you're becoming a hard-core hophead, and your expectations tend to inflate?

What's the OG? High OG is a double whammy on bitterness. As boil gravity goes up, hop utilization goes down, and so does the perception of bitterness in the final beer (assuming constant IBUs).

 

[adamh]

Get yourself one (or many) of the Speigelau IPA glasses. One of my IPAs tastes a bit hopless in a tulip glass (or any other glass), but put it into the IPA glass and :kooi:
I gave the same beer to some mates in the IPA glass. While they were still drinking that I got them to try a beer from a tulip - they were flabbergasted when I told them it was the same beer.

 

[Chizzy101]

That's quite a bit of hopping you're describing. When you mention having underwhelming results and the late additions in your second post, I'm assuming that you're referring to hop flavour and aroma, rather than bitterness. As with the posts above, I'd look at a few things...

• is the hop variety suitable for providing flavour and aroma? Based on my experience with Citra I'd say yes it is, but you could consider other varieties
• are the hops being added at the right time? Again, I think the late addition and dry hopping should give you good flavour and aroma. Later is generally better for achieving aroma. I agree with Yob, I'd add the dry hops after the primary fermentation is complete, otherwise you can lose aromatic / volatile compounds through the gas produced during fermentation. I just dump them straight into the fermentor once the fermentation dies down, never had a problem doing it that way. I don't typically leave the beer on the dry hops for more than 3-4 days though, as I do get concerned about getting a grassy flavour in the beer (maybe I'm just worried about nothing though).
• are the hops fresh? I buy mine in vacuum packed foil bags and store them in sealed bags in the freezer, but as soon as I open that first bag the aroma does start to decrease. Same with old hops, the fresher the better, store them cold and away from light and oxygen.
• what is the balance of the beer like? I've found my perception of hop bitterness and flavour is more about the balance between malt and hops rather than the amount of hops in the beer. If you really want the hops to stand out, it might be worth tweaking your recipe. Maybe go with a mashing profile that yields a very fermentable wort, using a yeast that attenuates really well and a high pitching cell density, consider a lower starting gravity or using fully fermentable sugars to get the ABV up without increasing the body. If you're using a lot of crystal in the grist maybe substitute it, I often use Munich instead for my APA / AIPA recipes.
• a bit of an unusual point, but how the beer is served makes a big difference in my opinion. Maybe try a glass that concentrates the aroma (e.g. something like a goblet) rather than drinking from a stubbie or a regular pint glass. Aroma can increase as beer warms up in the glass too.
• is the beer fresh? As the beer gets older the hop aroma does fade, so I try and drink mine when they're at their best, usually after a few weeks after kegging.
• more applicable for bitterness, but have a think about bumping up the sulfate in the water. Often your water utility provider can provide you with a water report detailing useful info like pH, concentration of salts like calcium, carbonate etc., and from there you can add salts like gypsum (CaSO4) to adjust. There's some good info available online to help make sense of water chemistry as it can be a bit daunting at first and adding salts can affect the concentration of other ions and mash pH.

 

[manticle]

Getting the right balance is not just about throwing everything at it and hoping for the best.
If I want good garlic flavour in a dish, I add 2 fresh cloves rather than 6, fine diced, slow cooked from a cool pan with a hint of salt.
Don't automatically assume a heavy hand is a skilful hand.

 

[marksy]

I find with all my bottled beers, that they need to chill out in the fridge for minimum 3 days. Hops and malt flavours all come out really nice for me when doing this, compared to putting a bee in the fridge the day of drinking it.

 

[manticle]

Bees don't taste hoppy when they are cold.
or warm.

fucken bees.

 

[Rocker1986]

You must have a more sensitive palate than I, because I can't notice a skerrick of difference in flavour of bees regardless of how long they've been in the fridge. :lol:

 

[manticle]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nNvo2Ny-hxc

 

[marksy]

Bees don't taste hoppy when they are cold.
or warm.

fucken bees.

Haha.

 

[marksy]

You must have a more sensitive palate than I, because I can't notice a skerrick of difference in flavour of bees regardless of how long they've been in the fridge. :lol:

You know what I meant.

But try it next time. I always noticed it with my kegs too, the first beer was a lot different from the last beer.

 

[Rocker1986]

Yeah I did but I never pass up an opportunity to take the piss.

Anyway, in all seriousness I regularly do it. I usually stick 7 or 8 stubbies in the fridge at a time - or when I'm CCing a batch I put some in the brew fridge as well. I can't detect any real difference in flavour from them being in there for a day vs several days. Maybe I just have a shitty palate. :lol:

 

[kaiserben]

I've been slightly underwhelmed by aromas in my IPAs, even after I doubled my dry hops (pellets) up to 120g in 23L batches to try to chase that aroma. After listening to loads of advice there were loads of things that could be fine tuned to get better aroma.
I started putting my @ 0 min addition in a bit later, timing it so that it spends only 10 mins in wort at temps between 80C-100C.

I had been keeping my hops in the fridge. I now store them in the freezer and I'm considering buying a vacuum sealer.

I haven't done this yet, but a suggestion was to transfer to secondary to get the beer off the yeast cake BEFORE dry hopping. (Usually I'd just leave in primary for 2 weeks before bottling, dry hopping 3-5 days before the end).

I only do a single dry hop addition. I'm considering splitting that into 2 seperate dry hop additions at 5 and 3 days before bottling.

Another (perhaps obvious) idea is to keep any crystal malts to a minimum. Also, you don't really need aromatic malts when you want hop aroma to shine.

Happy to hear if any of those are rubbish. And happy to hear some more ideas.