I would like to try the First Wort Hopping technique on my next Pilsner. The problem is I do a 90 minute boil with the Pilsner malt and don’t like the idea of boiling the hops for 90 minutes.
I was thinking about using a hop bag and removing the hops just before the boil. Then adding it back after 30 minutes into the boil. Any ideas?
I just throw them in before the first runnings and leave them in until the end. It’s worked fine for me.
If you do some research, you will find that is what Pilsner Urquell does. I, like tygo, have found that it works fine for me to just FWH and boil for 90 min.
Well thanks for the information. It looks like I am good with the 90 minute boil and FWH. It will be less than 1/3 of the hops anyway.
I second (or third) the FWH and 90 minute boil. That’s what I do, too.
Does that count double as far as triple hopping?
Fourth. That’s what I did for my Steve Urquell and it turned our fantastic.
This says PU FWH and boils for 2 hours. A good read if you are doing research into Bo-Pils.
http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue5.3/urquell.html
That’s a great read. Hadn’t come across it before. That decoction schedule is intense!
totally gona try that out march 1 when i do a bo pils
Not to start a big fuss or anything, but I thought I remembered an interview with Bamforth where he talks about FWH. IIRC he said it was something German brewers were really into for a little while, but then they did more research and found it didn’t really give them the benefits they thought they were getting from that, and have stopped using FWH.
Of course the Germans aren’t usually too concerned about increasing hop flavor.
My understanding is that they originally were doing it for aroma. If you’ve FWH much at all, you realize that you get no aroma from it. But IMO yuou do get a great hop flavor.
Agreed, I FWH nearly all of my beers. I find the hop flavor to be more complex and pleasing as opposed to adding a bittering addition.
I’ve found that I don’t get the bitterness I want by skipping a bittering addition in favor of FWH. I FWH many of my beers but my primary goal in doing it is the flavor. It does add bitterness of course but in my experience it’s much less than say a 60 minute addition. Or at least the perception of the bitterness is less.
Same here. Once in a while I want the specific quality of bitterness I get from doing FWH and skipping the 60 min. addition, but more often than not I do both.
I did an all FWH kolsch and it turned out great. I did the same thing with an ESB and the bitterness wasn’t nearly what I wanted.