I was listening to an interview with James Altweis, a hop chemist, and heard him talk about getting awesome aroma out of a 120F whirlpool addition. Has anyone tried it yet? On my APA I do a neutral bittering charge at 60 and nothing else till 170F where I add 50g each of cascade and centennial held for 30 minutes while whirlpooling. Next time im going to toss in another 20g each when the temp reaches 120F, no hold, just let it finish chilling. Will be interesting to see what that does.
You now have the moral obligation to do an experiment by splitting up the batch in two and in one half add all the hops @170, and in the other half add some of the hops @120.
No, you are. Lol
I actually know this particular beer so well that I will be able to tell if aroma was increased and if the beer was improved. Some may disagree and that’s fine. Its only important that I know.
Did he talk at all about the flavor impact from this? I’d expect hop aroma to go up at the expense of hop flavor since it is closer to room temp. I still dry hop whirlpool hopped beers, for aroma and flavor.
Whirlpool additions are of course pre-fermentation vs. dry hopping post fermentation so this is all speculation on my part.
Mr. Gladish has stated that he does a whirlpool/steep in that temp range.
I’ve never gone below 160F, yet. May add @ 120F sometime as it cools, to try it out.
I saw that interview about a year ago and since then have split flameout/whirlpool hops into several additions added as temp falls to 120. I also stir a lot - agitation helps speed up extraction. I don’t usually dry hop but I get a lot of linalool from hops like Citra and Mosaic from the steep. It’s one of the few hop aroma compounds that doesn’t fade during fermentation (it actually gets stronger) and survives oxidation and scalping in bottles well. No triangle tests though so take what I say with a pinch of salt. Altweis certainly sounded knowledgeable, but I think a lot of what he says is speculative so take that with a pinch if salt too.
Flavour and aroma are different words for the same thing really - both perceived in the nose. The convention of splitting hop additions into taste, flavour and aroma isn’t based on any science, it’s just an old brewing myth.
If all of your flavor hops were at 170 and you moved some or all to 120, sure. I would be leaving my flavor addition alone and adding another 40g at 120. Also, I have a pump and chiller with tangential, so no need to stir here. It whirlpools continuously until I reach pitching temp, then I kill the pump and let the break and hops settle.
I already get a bunch of aroma, in my opinion enough for an APA. Im just going to give it a shot to see if it gives a significant bump. I dont like dry hopping myself. I feel that trading a percentage of aroma for clarity and reducing oxydation is worth it. Thats just my personal opinion
I understand what you’re saying, I think. For example, saying that you don’t get any aroma at all from flavor additions is kind of not true. However, I do think you can have hop aroma methods that are not very noticeable when you smell the beer but are obvious when you taste the beer. And there are methods that increase the smell and taste. Then you have the style related effects. You can hop a Helles with an ounce at 60 min and have a judge tell you there’s too much hop aroma and flavor. Then give him a pale ale that you hopped at 60 min, 10 min, and 170 whirlpool, and he says it doesnt have any aroma… huh?
It’s interesting what you say about the Helles. I wonder if the spicy, Noble Hop flavours behave very differently from the citrusy flavours in American hops - maybe they make it through the boil better and so don’t need to go in at flameout.
You’re right that beer has a very different flavour in the mouth than when you smell it, but either way it’s your nose detecting aromatic compounds. Warming beer on the tongue will release more than you get from the glass, and the smell sensation merges with the feel and taste of the beer in the mouth, making it seem very different. Taste buds can only pick up 4 or 5 basic chemical signatures (acidity, sweetness, salt, bitterness, savoury). Everything else we call flavour happens in the nose.
After 3 weeks in the Vaterland, I am convinced that he judges are looking for a Munich Helles like Augustiner. Helles tends to have a little more hop aroma and flavor when you get to the OberPfalz or Niederbayern.
I think the only commercial example that I’ve tried is Spaten. Certainly does make me an expert. Maybe the stuff they ship here is hoppier than what you get in country, I don’t know. What I do know is that it had hop aroma and flavor, not much, but it was there.
My earlier point is that sometimes people align there perception to the guidelines and then take it farther than it should be. So if the guidelines say low to moderate-low, they take that to mean none, and they go looking for it like its an off flavor. In helles if they can detect any hop aroma they call it out as too much. So, in that beer apparently an ounce of 4% halertau mittelfruh at 60 minutes contributes too much aroma. Later in the day they are judging an APA that calls for moderate to strong aroma, which they take to mean blast in the face like you just buried your face in a bale of simcoe. Your beer had hops at 60, 20, 10, flameout, and whirlpool, but they cant smell them somehow because the beer isnt hazy or has hop leaves floating in it I guess… In other words, in one beer 60 min hops gives too much aroma, in another a half pound in the whirlpool doesn’t give enough.
Sometimes you just have to smile and say thanks and move on.
You are preaching to the choir.
I would wager that most judges have not been to Germany, and those that have have been to Munich but not Regensburg.
Ha! That gave me a chuckle. It is very style dependent and subjective all at the same time. Does make one wonder though…
One question I have is, how long are you looking at at that time for best extraction? I’m assuming that, like most things, you need to go longer at lower temps. I’m typically in the 60 minute range at 170-200F. Dry hops take a couple days at room temp. So are we talking hours here?
I use 30min at 170 and get plenty of flavor out of 100g. I dont know how much more I could gain by going longer. I do this because it works and its not too much hops cost wise, or too much time waste for me. I dont know what optimal is but this tends to get the job done in a reasonable time and reasonable cost.
I also dont know the optimal time for 120. The idea is to replace some of the lower temp volatiles that 170 boils off. I suspect those come out of the hops fairly rapidly. I dont plan to hold temp at 120. Once my 170 rest is done I will turn the chiller water back on and when the dial is approaching 120 I’ll toss in 40g and just keep on chilling. At pitching temp I kill the water and pump and let it settle for about 20 min then rack.
So this 120 charge will be in for about 30 minutes total, temps from 120-65. Will some get blown off by fermentation? Sure. Will all of it? I doubt it. In theory this extra charge at 120 should increase aroma in the final beer at the expense of about $2 and no extra time or effect on clarity. We shall see.
Honestly, I wouldn’t give it more than a 5 minute steep @ 120F. Aroma gets released pretty quickly IMO once the pellets dissolve. If I were looking for a lot of flavor at that temp it would take quite a bit longer obviously. It’s only been in recent years at the home level (pre hop stand) that most hop aroma came at anything other than flameout with no steep at all. I think I’ll experiment with it.
When im chilling, my temp is dropping about 50% per ~90 seconds. So when I add at 120 it will be at about 90 in 90 seconds, about 75 in another 90, and about 65 in another 90. So roughly 5-10 minutes to get from 120-65. Then another 20 minutes for settling
Isn’t there some concern with letting the wort sit too long in the kettle at such a low temp? Mark V can confirm, but that temp is asking for bacteria growth at a pretty high rate. A proper fitting lid and low air movement would certainly be required.
I’m thinking I’ll try just treating it as an old school flameout addition and just add @ 120F as I cool, no steep. Truthfully, I get more than enough aroma with a 175-170F stand and sometimes dry hopping. Just curious to try.