My First Lager

[Jonez]

Hi all
I am quite keen on using my new temp controller so I am planning to use a lager can with some bohemian pilsener yeast I have. I know cascade is an Ale hop so I got left tettnanger and Super alpha. I am thinking either some S-Alpha for bittering plus tettnang for flavour /aroma or use tettnanger for everything. Question is: would I miss adding some character by using a single hop? or is it better to keep it simple for this style?
I will be steeping about 300g carapils, 500g lmde, 600 dex. I don't want too much body but want some degree of bitterness and reasonably good flavour/ aroma. I don't know how good tett is for bitterness although I have read it can be used for that.

So I am thinking say
10g tett ( or S-Alpha) 20 min
5g tett 5 min
maybe another 5g tett after fermentation

What would work best?
Thanks
Jonez

 

[manticle]

Any hop can be used for anything (within reason). They have different units which will give higher or lower levels and obviously they all have different flavours, aromas etc. Tettnang is fairly close in aa (Alpha acid) to other noble hops like hallertau and saaz. I believe each crop varies but it will probably sit somewhere between 4 and 5 %. I'm not sure why you think cascade is specifically an ale hop? I'm sure it could be used successfully in a lager. The distinction between bittering and finishing is a lot to do with the ability the hop has to bitter as 10 g of a low aa hop might contribute half the bittering that 5 g of a much higher aa hop will. Thus it's cheaper to use a high aa hop for bittering.

Personally I think simplicity works better unless you are playing with a hopburst or indian or american pale. Simplicity is particularly good when you are trying to learn what characteristics each hop brings to the party.

Super alpha has a lot more aa than tettnang so you'll need to work out your amounts. 10g of SA will add a lot more bitterness than 10g of super alpha. I'm also not sure what super Alpha tastes like and the flavour will be present from a 20 minute boil. If you can find out if you like the super alpha flavour or at least what to expect that would be good. You could bypass this by doing a longer bopil (say 40 minutes? and adding the super alpha at the start. Personally I think any noble hop will work best so my vote would be with tett for the later additions.

How bitter is the tin and what are the aa% values of the hops you have?

 

[King Brown]

Providing you add enough of the tettnang I would say you would get better hop character using just that, High alpha hops tend to have quite a course flavour (even when only used as bittering additions) I much prefer to use a lot of low alpha rather than a little high alpha, of course this is more expensive but the extra cost is negligable to the average home brew batch size. Also it would give you the opportunity to really find out what flavour tettnang contributes to a beer

Edit - Also I would increase your boil time as manticle suggests, and depending on how hoppy you like it you could easily double those hop additions (if not triple!)

 

[manticle]

Damn edit option has disppaeared.

'10g of SA will add a lot more bitterness than 10g of super alpha' SHOULD read : '10g of Super Alpha will add a lot more bitterness than 10g of tettnanger'.

 

[Jonez]

... Tettnang is fairly close in aa (Alpha acid) to other noble hops like hallertau and saaz. I believe each crop varies but it will probably sit somewhere between 4 and 5 %.

I am drinking a Tooheys Lager I brewed with ale yeast at 18C. I used a saaz teabag, dry hoped. It is nice but lacks a bit of bittering. That is why I thought I could use a hop other than noble for bittering.

A mate's father ( old German bloke) does only lager kits and uses S- alpha and tettnang. His beer is a bit too bitter for my like but he loves it that way. Not long ago I tried another one of his and it was nice. So i though the old man put a bit less s= alpha this time.. just a thought. But as you and king brown said, perhaps I just need to add more noble hops to achieve the bitterness I want.

How bitter is the tin and what are the aa% values of the hops you have?

My tin is a tooheys clasic lager, and hops are: tettnang 4.2% and s-alpha 10.7%

I'm not sure why you think cascade is specifically an ale hop? I'm sure it could be used successfully in a lager. The distinction between bittering and finishing is a lot to do with the ability the hop has to bitter as 10 g of a low aa hop might contribute half the bittering that 5 g of a much higher aa hop will. Thus it's cheaper to use a high aa hop for bittering.

I have read in more than one place, cascade is "not ideal for European style" beer. Also a friend brewer was surprised I wanted to use cascade on a lager.

Personally I think simplicity works better unless you are playing with a hopburst or indian or american pale. Simplicity is particularly good when you are trying to learn what characteristics each hop brings to the party.

You are right. Only thought of the s-alpha because of the experience with saaz. But again, as you said it may just need a bigger amount of noble hops.

... I'm also not sure what super Alpha tastes like and the flavour will be present from a 20 minute boil.
If you can find out if you like the super alpha flavour or at least what to expect that would be good. You could bypass this by doing a longer bopil (say 40 minutes? and adding the super alpha at the start. Personally I think any noble hop will work best so my vote would be with tett for the later additions.

I used this hop on my real ale, but cant tell yet as it was the "sarsaparilla" flavoured brew I mentioned in another post. I am leaving it age. It tasted a bit strong on bottling day

I also used it on a draught kit (Currently brewing)

10g s-alpha 10 min boil,
7g s-alplha at flameout

then split the brew in two ( 12 litres water containers) after 8 days and hoped one with 1 plug cascade and the other with 10g tettnager. dyacetil rest today and probably bottling on Sunday


@king brown
It makes a lot of sense what you say. It looks like I better use tettnang all the way. so waht amounts and time would you recommend given the ingredients I will be using?

 

[Jonez]

It makes a lot of sense what you say. It looks like I better use tettnang all the way. so waht amounts and time would you recommend given the ingredients I will be using?

I mean, if using tett for bittering I suppose i would get a bit of flavour as well, so when I add the flavour hop I could take that in account.

Someone once told me 15g dry hoping is a lot that is why I thought 10g. But I see there are people here that use up to 40g. I wouldn't want to overpower the flavour though, so not too hoppy but a nice bitterness would be good.

so rethinking things: how does this look?

20g tett 20 minutes (do I really need to boil this longer for a noble hop)
7-10g tett 5min
7-10g tett 3 days into fermentation

I am aware there will be a bit of bitterness from the kit ( lager)

 

[manticle]

Cascade is an American hop but that doesn't mean you can't expand a bit on it. Restrictions are up to you. If you think the flavour is out of place then that's the only rule you need to follow.

Re: saaz teabag - if you used it as a finishing hop then it would give only aroma and maybe a tiny bit of flavour - no real bitterness. To get much bitterness from hops you'd need to boil them beyond about 15 minutes (and preferably something between 20 and 90). Saaz is also quite low aa and if the hops are not fresh (as thos teabags sometimes aren't) you would have bugger all aa left.

You will get flavour from the hop at 20 minutes (and even at 40). Once you go to 60 you'll get very little discernible - only bitterness. Some claim that they can detect bittering hops (what type etc) but I wouldn't worry too much until you've played around a bit more.

Basically it works like this - longer boil = mainly bitterness, mid length = mainly flavour, short or finish = mainly aroma. Obviously there is crossover but a hop at 60 (noble or not) won't give much more than bitterness, a hop at flameout won't give much more than aroma. Usual additions (taht most people tend to use) are 60 for bittering, between 40 and 15 for flavouring (could be 40, 30 20 etc) and anything else up to flame out and dry hopping for aroma.

What you need to do is calculate how bitter the tin is by iteslf and how much extra bitterness you want to add. You can use online calculators to work out the IBU (International Bitterness Units). You can compare averages for style recommendations (although you can tweak these to taste too) and work out which hop additions and when to add them. A good free one may be found here:http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator

or you could try ianh's spreadsheet (somewhere on this forum) which gets great reviews from those who use it.

If the IBU value on the tin seems ridiculously high (if it's included at all) then it's probably because they are often referring to the IBU of the concentrate so you'd need to work out how that relates to your total volume. I've never done that but maybe someone else will be able to help. I'd guess something between 28 and 35 IBU total (depending on personal taste) would be a good range for a refreshing lager unless you're already a hophead.

Are you brewing this as a lager or ale out of interest?

 

[Jonez]

Are you brewing this as a lager or ale out of interest?

I will be brewing with bohemian pilsener yeast at lager temp.

edit: using Ian's spreadsheet now. Selected bohemian pilseners and it needs about 40 g tett at 60 minutes (or 10g s-alpha) to get the IBUs right. So I guess I won't be doing that one if I want to use only tettnanger.

 

[manticle]

You could get away with using the super alpha as the bittering and saving the tett for 20 minutes and onwards. Either that or buy more tett.

 

[andrewl]

Manticle is right on the money... I'd be using super for bittering and chuck some tetnang in at the end of the boil for flavour/aroma... either that or make 2 seperate brews using a different hop in each brew and see what you like. That way when you do your 3rd you can try and mix and match a little to try and perfect it.

 

[Jonez]

Manticle is right on the money... I'd be using super for bittering and chuck some tetnang in at the end of the boil for flavour/aroma... either that or make 2 seperate brews using a different hop in each brew and see what you like. That way when you do your 3rd you can try and mix and match a little to try and perfect it.

Andrew,
A similar experiment of mine is still in the fridge brewing. It is an ale though. Used S-alpha for bittering then split the batch in two (I am using two 12L water containers from Woolworths) and dry hoped one with 10g tett and the other with 1 plug cascade. I also used specialty grain for first time. I can't wait to see the results but i must. However I feel like I want to do the lager sooner than I can drink the experiment.

With this lager It seems better for my novice palate to use only one hop (tett).. probably buy/use more of it or brew a style that doesn't need that much. It is a waste to use this yeast in something other than a bohemian pilsener?....ahhhh.. but I remember I could split it is 6 starters(which would last up to 12 months in the fridge- so I read recently), so worthwhile the experiment anyway...