What’s up everybody. So I am brewing a ipa batch and I picked up a variety of hops that I though would be fun and delcious. I was wonder if I could get some feed back on which out of the 6 would be my best base and as well as a good combo for my batch. So with that being said I picked up some Amarillo-Ahtanum-Centennial-Simcoe-Sirachi Ace I aprecciate your guys time. Thanks
So, you only listed 5 ;). But I do like simcoe, Amarillo, and centennials in equal parts for late and dry hop additions for an IPA. You can bitter with Simcoe, but I’d suggest Columbus to bitter with in an IPA. I’ve not used the other two varieties here.
6…5 lol yea I haven’t used ace or ahtanum before but the guy was talking about it highly so I figured I give it a buy. Normally I would base with Columbus but unfortunately I ran out and so did he.
If you could possibly get an oz of Columbus to use for bittering (60 minutes), I’d use a combo of all the other hops to finish and dry hop. I’d save at least 4 oz to dry hop. Sounds good.
I don’t know how many oz of hops you have total, but if you can get around 50 IBUs combined of Simcoe and Centennial for the 60 min addition and have some left over, those two hops also have excellent flavor and aromas too. In other words, if there are any left after the bittering addition, I would blend them with the other hops for finishing and dry hops. The Simcoe and Centennial will give you a nice dose of pine that you wouldn’t get much of from Amarillo and Sorachi, as well as some citrus.
That’s a good idea I have some left over from last week’s batch. As far as finishing I have been doing things a little different some say once flame is our and some say 30 min before flame out. Which works best for you?
Well, I experiment a lot with flavor and aroma hopping, so I don’t really have one set procedure (yet). You could add 2 oz of the blend each at 15,10,5,0 minutes. I made a lot of IPAs doing that. Or you could add half of your flavor and aroma hops near the end of boil and also do a hop stand - ie., cool the wort to 175F and add the other half of the aroma/flavor hops and let them steep for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Just be sure to save hops for dry hopping !
I think all of those hops are great for IPAs.
Just one thing to mention is the Sorachi Ace seems to be what we Brits would call a ‘marmite hop’…you’ll either love it or hate it. It can throw up some odd/interesting flavours and you have to be careful what you blend it with. Early flavour flavour to me is faintly lemon with a bit of bubblegum but as it matures in the bottle/keg I find it turns more to coconut. BTW, I’m one of the lovers
Hope you have a great brew.
To me, Sorachi is pretty lemony and kind of herbal, but I definitely never noticed anything like that. Maybe old/ bad harvest ? That would be a pretty tough selling point if it were common. ;D
My son did a big report on Australia for school. They eat a lot of that crap there. And I say that after sampling some that he bought online to take to school. Freaking vile substance IMO.