First Wort Hopping ?

I brewed a batch that called for first wort hopping.
Do you remove the first wort hops or leave them in
for the whole boil ? ( I left them in)

Yep, you leave them in for the entire boil.

I am not a big fan of FWH.
I did about 6 brews with it and all of them had harsh bitterness (my term).
I tried it with Saaz (Zatec) and Hallertau.

I do it for my Pliny the Elder clone.  Seems to work OK there, granted that beer oozes hops, so it may only be good for beers designed to give you a Lupulin Threshold Shift.  :wink:

Interesting…I’ve found exactly the opposite.

This might be my subjective observation but JamilZ had similar comments about FWH on some recent BN shows.

I mean is it works for you go for it.
I am just sharing my experience.

Declaimer:
I color of my cooler is orange,
I fly sparge and recirculate,
decoction mash is not a stranger in my household :slight_smile:

Nice, had to laugh at that one!

Jamil participated in the FWH experiment tasting I did.  I’d have to check my notes, but I don’t recall any comments about harshness.

And I forgive you your brewing sins!  :wink:

I’ve recently tried it with Cascade and Centennial and it’s the smoothest hop flavor I’ve ever come across.  Definitely a keeper for me.

Is that a fly-sparging reference?

Thank you father  ;D

and decoction  :smiley: :wink:

DC - I think FWH may work well with lower AA varietals (ahem, Mt. Hood comes to mind?) but I found when I used big boys like Simcoe, the bitterness was just overwhelming since I went with the “treat it like a 20min addition” philosophy.

Of course, this makes no sense relative to TM’s statement, since Zots are one of the lowest AAs out there, usually.

To each their own.  :wink:

I use it for my Barleywine…and Denny’s RIPA. It works great for those examples however it may not for less bitter styles. I think it will really depend on the type of hops and the style of beer you are trying to use and brew.

I agree. I tried it because I heard of SMOOTH bitterns.
I used it in Czech Pilsners and Alts.
May be it is my process but I come to a different conclusion.
I would not count it as 20 min addition.
I would say it was more like full boil time addition (90 min for me).

and orange cooler!

Definitely to each their own.  I’ve often FWH with high alpha hops and haven’t experienced what I found to be objectionable bitterness.

A couple of interesting links about this that caught my eye recently:

http://www.brewery.org/library/1stwort.html

In discussing this in my local homebrew club list, I have come to understand that not only does one use low-alpha hops, one should do so in lieu of the aroma hops, or at least drastically reduce the aroma hops.  Maybe, then, in the end, we should make certain that the IBUs of the finished product does not change.  I occasionally use ProMash, and I know that the program will calculate IBUs for FWH.  Of course, who knows how accurate that calculation is…

Bruce

also, FWIW,
I have an orange and a blue cooler,
I decoct,
AND I just started to fly sparge.

and I’m damned proud of it!

One of the reasons I ran my FWH experiment was to see how accurate it is…at least with the -65 setting I use.  The answer is pretty darn close.  And although much of the literature says to use low alpha hops and that you will get aroma from them, my experience is vastly different.

I thought the tests suggested 10% more than a 60 min addition(setting = 110), which doesn’t correlate with the -65% (20min) ???