finishing hops

[worry wort]

ok, now I'm confused....again or further, not sure yet.

I am brewing my first attempt at other than a k n k beer. The kit came with Morgans Amarillo and Cascade finishing hops satchels. The recipe that came with the pack says on day 4 to put the tea bags in the fermentor and leave till bottling. All seemed simple. Today at the LHBS, which isn't so local, the guy said 'you have to boil the hops for 30 to 40 minutes before putting them in you fv'. This has confused hell out of me. The pack says to put bag in a cup of boiling water and put fluid and bag into fv, the instructions says put the bags only in on day 4, and lbhs dude says boil hops first. As Im at day 2  of brewing, can someone set me straight on this. I still plan to just throw the bags in as instructions say, but woujld appreciate some direction by you gurus.

thanks

ww.

[Hairy]

Adding them to the FV during fermentation is called dry hopping and adds aroma to the beer. This is what you will be doing and is common practice.

Boiling hops will add bitterness and flavour (depending on the time it is boiled) and the resulting liquid (not the hop matter) is added to the wort at the start before pitching the yeast.

Your LHBS guy either doesn’t explain things well or doesn’t really know what he is doing.

So add them at day 4 as planned.

[Shamus O'Sean]

Hi WW

I was going to reply until you said you wanted to hear from a guru.

Here is my two bobs worth anyway:

I think the LHBS guy must have misunderstood what you were talking to him about.  However he was not wrong.

There are many ways to add your hops to a brew.  However, they often have very different purposes.  It sounds like the LHBS guy was talking about boiling hops for bitterness.  Thirty minutes to 60 minutes is very common.

Your recipe instructions are what is called dry hopping: Adding the hop bag to the fermenter part way through the ferment.  It adds aroma.

The pack instructions about putting the hop bag in a cup of boiling water will extract some flavour from the hops and popping the hop-tea and hop bags in the fermenter will produce some aroma, like dry hopping.

As per Hairy's (a guru) advice, I would go with the recipe instructions and add them as a dry hop on day 4.

Cheers Shamus 

[Worthog]

+1.  What Hairy said. Just chuck them in

Cheers

[The Captain!!]

Plus one to all above. 

Go by the recipe for now, get an understanding of the process and then progress from there as you are now by progressing to adding hops. 

taste your beer when it’s ready then you’ll be able to assess what you like about the beer and what you may not like. 

Once you’ve got a handle on that then we can start talking about hop teas and hop utilisation in wort to produce more flavour.

[worry wort]

'yep, sometimes too much info can cause overload when learning. Again, thanks to all for your advice, just when I think its plain sailing, another issue pops up, but I'll get there.

cheers all.

ww

 

[Otto Von Blotto]

What Hairy said. What the recipe is describing is dry hopping, it really is as simple as just chucking them into the fermenter,  no boiling required. 

If hops are boiled or steeped they are left out of the fermenter, just the wort they're boiled or steeped in goes into it. There is no point putting the hops themselves in after either of those processes. There wouldn't be many kits where a 30 or 40 minute hop boil would work well either.

[Lab Cat]

Just to add: the hops you were were given are likely in a 'tea bag' so they are intended to be thrown in after ferment, as everyone says.

The LBHS guy is confusing this with hop boiling prior to ferment, where you use loose hop pellets.

Just go with the recipe. However, in my limited expereince teabag sizes of hops just aren't big enough, they're usually 15g or so. Most on here would dry hop with 50g minimum.

[Beerlust]

Hello Worry Wort.

+1 to what has already been said.

12 hours ago, worry wort said:

ok, now I'm confused....again or further, not sure yet.

...The recipe that came with the pack says on day 4 to put the tea bags in the fermentor and leave till bottling....The pack says to put bag in a cup of boiling water and put fluid and bag into fv, the instructions says put the bags only in on day 4,

I'd be bloody confused too with those contradictory instructions in the recipe pack.

The LHBS guy may have been describing a hop 'tea', not a boil. It does involve boiling some water, then placing your hop bags in a container or coffee plunger & pouring 500ml to a litre of the boiled water over the hops & allowing it to 'steep' for 20-30mins. You then strain this liquid into your fermenter with the rest of your fermentables prior to pitching the yeast.

Hop "teas" or "steeps" commonly add flavour & some aroma but little in the way of real bitterness.

Cheers,

Lusty.

[worry wort]

On ‎12‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 12:47 AM, Lab Rat said:

Just to add: the hops you were were given are likely in a 'tea bag' so they are intended to be thrown in after ferment, as everyone says.

The LBHS guy is confusing this with hop boiling prior to ferment, where you use loose hop pellets.

Just go with the recipe. However, in my limited expereince teabag sizes of hops just aren't big enough, they're usually 15g or so. Most on here would dry hop with 50g minimum.

your right LabRat, I put the 2 finishing hops in, both 12.5 gm, and in the sampling stage could detect neither aroma or change in taste. maybe in the bottle it may improve. thanks for the valuable tip.