New here, Hello. Looking for a particular flavour.

[ianpick]

Hello all
I'm new on this site but have been reading some posts for a while.

I have been kit brewing for longer than I can remember but have recently started adding stuff to make things a bit different.
I have a Cascade hop growing up the back of the house that flowered for the first time this year. I used some of the hops to make a green beer by just boiling them and adding to my usual Tom Caxton kit from Wilko, I dried the rest.
I have also bought several varieties of other hops, Bramling X, Styrian Goldings, Fuggles, Northdown and Amarillo but I haven't used all of these yet.

I boil 2-4 ozs of hops in a couple of pints of water and then add this to the brew before topping up with water and adding the yeast. I am also experimenting with spray malt and brewing sugar. I am boiling the hops for 30 mins, is this too long?

I bottle all my beer and leave to settle for 7/10 days before drinking.

My next brew will be 1 can TC Real Ale, 1 can Wilko Copper Bitter, 1kg dark SDME and 1kg Belgian Candi Sugar mixed into two 23l brewing buckets. I think I will use 2 oz Cascade and 2 oz Fuggles of extra hops. I've never done this particular combination before but that's half the enjoyment of the process, not knowing what comes out at the end.

How long should I boils the hops or should or could I also add some, dry, to the buckets during fermentation and should I reduce to 20l for a bit more body.
I have some nice ales here and most are very bitter, which I like, but what I would like to achieve eventually is a beer that has a full bodied caramel/toffee flavour I have had from some bottled beers, Innis and Gunn original springs to mind. I don't know if this is achievable without using processes that I haven't done before but I'd love to get it right if I could. My last fermentation included a litre of caramel syrup that hasn't made any real impact on flavour.

Any advice would be gratefully received.
Ian

[Jim]

Welcome Ian!

I reckon you're already on the slippery slope towards grain brewing.

Re boiling hops, I would treat hops you add to the kit as aroma hops - that is, you're looking for flavour rather than bitterness from them, which means a short boil or even adding them just after you switch off. Have a look in the extract and grain forums, and also read the first section on this page which explains very briefly about getting what you want out of hops.

[Geezah]

Have you considered steeping some caramalt grains @ 65-70c for 30 minutes to gain the toffee / caramel flavour you are after?

You could also then use the wort produced to boil your hops. You would use less hops and a shorter time to extract bitterness and flavours as the sugars produced from the grains will help carry the Alpha Acids from the hops and in to the wort.

... just another line of thought to keep the costs low, get the desired result and to entice you further in to the world of all grain.

[hazelbrew]

Hello all
I used some of the hops to make a green beer by just boiling them and adding to my usual Tom Caxton kit from Wilko, I dried the rest.
Ian

Never mind advice.

What did this taste like?

[ianpick]

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.
I too am thinking about the whole grain process but it's a different world so I'll need to research it.

I'm obviously boiling hops far too long and today's brew will be a much shorter process, can't wait to see what this batch turns out like.

The green hop beer/ale (not really sure which is right!) was really nice, it did make a difference to the straight kit brew. The bitterness was tinged with a slight citrus note which lasted for a short while right on the back of my tongue and then disappeared very quickly, a nice effect. I won't be able to replicate this now until next September.

However don't ever do what I did, I boiled six ounces of green Cascade hops, straight of the vine, in about two pints of water. After a good while I decided to find out what it tasted like so took a spoonful.
The bitterness of five gallons concentrated into two pints, I'm not going to do that again!

I'll be ordering caramalt grains today, looks like using that could be key to what I'm trying to achieve, thanks for that.

Ian

[ianpick]

Now I'm ticked off, I threw away a cooler box about two weeks ago!