Interesting. I have used the 175°F (80°C) addition before after many brewers mentioned that the late hop character was better than a late boil addition. I think the article in the link has one flaw in that he measured the IBUs in the 100 and 80c beers and found the 100c beer higher in IBUs (not sure on the method of measurement but whatever). But I don’t think “IBUs” are what people are after when they do a hopstand/whirlpool addition. They’re trying to get aroma and/or flavor by having the hop oils stick around in the beer longer by adding them to cooler wort so that the oils don’t burn off. Am I right on that? I’m not a huge hophead so I don’t know.
I think you’re right. To me, calculating IBUs makes sense for boil additions but there’s not a lot of agreement on how adding whirlpool or dry hops contribute to the IBU number. In some sense, this comes down to trial and error for what your preference is in terms of flavor and aroma. I think someone has posted on another IPA thread about there strategy of just getting the IBU to where you want it with a single 60 min addition of a clean bittering hop (Warrior, Magnum, etc) and then play around with 0 min, whirlpool and dry hop to get the flavor/aroma effect you are after.
For me, and this is just a personal preference, I’ve gotten a bit fatigued lately by the whole super-West Coast IPA that’s incredibly loaded up on the late hop additions (hop bursting comes to mind) to the point where the beer tastes sweet without any presence of a straight bittering backbone, let alone any contribution from the malt. Sure it smells fantastic and tastes like liquid Starburst candy but it gets cloying and unbalanced the more of this style I drink. To each there own! =]
I hear a lot of people say that they are “over” beers like you describe and I admit that I was never really into them in the first place. I can sit down and have a nice late-hopped IPA and really enjoy it but having 5 gallons of it on tap in my basement is not really necessary because I’m not going to drink it that fast and the hop character would fade before I finished the beer.
Same boat. My wife loves IPAs. Meanwhile I’m making fesbtbiers, helles, dunkel, kolsch, alt, etc. The issue is that she doesn’t drink beer all the time so if I make her a late/dry-hopped IPA kind of thing and I tell her, “DRINK IT WHILE IT’S FRESH!”, she might but she might not. Eventually she’ll say, “This doesn’t taste the same…”. Right.
Up front - I haven’t done a triangle on this. It’s pretty interesting, Paul, but I can’t say that’s been my experience - I’ve definitely gotten the higher bitterness at higher temps but not clearly better flavor and aroma by any means. I have to wonder if the tasters, by getting more bitterness from the flameout whirlpool perceived the beer as more ‘IPA-like’ and voted the beer as ‘more hoppy’ than actually assessing the true flavor and aroma apart from the bitterness. But my palate is pretty decent and I feel that hopstands at flameout made a good beer that was more bitter, but by no means with better aroma and flavor than beers I make now steeped @ 175F. Also, I add a healthy bittering charge in the kettle when I use this technique, to avoid a ‘sweet up front’ IPA. erockrph is getting an IPA made this way in the swap (70 IBU in the kettle) so I’m curious to get his feedback. Regardless, my brewing isn’t locked into much - I change techniques and try new things all the time. Get locked into anything in brewing and you get passed by before you know it.
Thanks for the clarification, Paul. He got a pretty decent bump in IBUs between the 212 and 175 examples. I was surprised at how big the difference was and my guess is that the additions were on the LARGE side. Cheers.
When I want to control my IBU’s to a specific value, I use a 60-minute addition, and a whirlpool addition at 170F to get flavor and aroma. It works well for those styles and allows you to dial in the bittering and flavor separately. Your flavor hops aren’t constrained by your IBU’s and your bittering isn’t really affected by your late hops.
For my house IPA I do something different. I skip my 60-minute addition and add all my hot-side hops at flameout, then hold my hop stand for 90 minutes. I think this method really maxes out the amount of hop character you can extract. This beer ends up being pretty extreme. Also, since it’s an IPA, I’m not really concerned with the number of IBU’s in the finished beer (it will max out around 100 IBU depending on yeast and fermentation), so I don’t have to worry about limiting isomerization. I do find that the apparent bitterness tends to be much lower than the measured IBU’s for whirlpool additions, or at least less harsh.
Of course, all of this assumes that you are using a crapload of hops (I use 4oz per gallon of final kettle volume). If you’re not getting enough hop character, and you’re not really pushing the amount of hops, then that’s the first thing to address.
Similar process here but let me make sure I’m getting this right… your hops in my kettle at 4oz per gallon post boil would be 24oz. or 1.5# of hops in a 6 gallon whirlpool. Am I reading that right?
I brew half-sized batches. At the end of the boil I’m at about 3.25 gallons and use 13 ounces of hops. Yes, you are reading that right. And yes, this is insane. I never claimed sanity
Keep in mind that this makes an extreme beer that tastes closer to grapefruit juice than a typical beer. Good thing I like grapefruit juice. ;D