help with late hops for bittering

[Digby Swift]

I am looking for some advice regarding using late hops as your bittering component, I have some leftovers and thought i'd experiment with this technique in order to look for a bigger hop flavour. This is what I've put together from what I have leftover:-

8 lbs 2 oz Pale Malt (3.7kg)
2.2 lbs Munich Malt (1kg)
7 oz torrefied wheat (200g)
6 oz Crystal 120ebc (170g)
2oz Chocolate (60g)

The only hops I have left are 66g progress (unkown AA), 33g Goldings (4.5%), 66g Styrian Goldings

How about this:-

33g Progress 25 min
33g progress 15 min
33g goldings 5 min
33g Styrian 80c steep

save the rest of styrians for a dry hop if I fancy it at the time.

Which according to beersmith will give about 28 IBU and a gravity of 1052, although I don't usually use beersmith as my figures never tally up but beer engine didn't have munich malt. What do you think of using the munich malt? I have never used it before but have some left over from a brew still fermenting and thought i'd stick in a kg as I don't have anymore pale malt. What do you think of the timings of these additions? It seems strange not to have any hops in earlier, is this a bad idea not to have any at all?

Many Thanks

[MartialAnt]

Bittering hops are added at the start of the boil. Or thats what i do anyway.

[adm]

There's been quite a lot of talk about getting most of the bittering from late hop additions - and someone recently posted a link to a powerpoint file (which I've attached to this post) that dealt with it pretty well.

I've recently taking to making beers that get half the bittering from first wort hopping (which i think gives a nice smooth bitterness, plus extra hop character) and the other half from a 15 minute addition. These have been coming out nicely (Thanks Gurgeh for the original post on that). This seems like a nice halfway house between the old school and the young pretender.

Digby - I don't think I'd remove the long bittering addition completely. Why not first wort hop to 25 or 30% of your bitterness, then get the rest from late hops?

[Digby Swift]

I've never tried first wort hopping either so that is a good idea. I'll give that a try as it seems wrong to boil with no hops in at all as i've always had the bittering contribution at the start of boil as martial ant does. Just thought with these left over ingredients its worth seeing what all the fuss is about on the new techniques.

so just to clarify with FWH I just add the hops to the boiler then add the wort? I've read a bit about calculating the ibus, for whatever they're worth, but what do you think is a good measurement to take as the FWH utilisation?

Its probably me being stupid but where do I find the link to the powerpoint?

[delboy]

I've done it several times, i'd say the (if your calcs are right) that the hopping schedule you were thinking of going for would be spot on. That said nothing wrong with doing a bit of FWH as well.

[adm]

Nope - not you're not being stupid. That's just me

The file is (hopefully) here: Massive Hop Character

For the FWH - just chuck them in the boiler and sparge straight onto them. I'm not sure what the difference in utilisation for FWH vs a "normal" addition is. I think I've heard 90% of a 90 minute addition, but I wouldn't take it as gospel. Beer Alchemy just works it out for me.

[Digby Swift]

What did you think of using this method Delboy? Are the benefits worth the extra hop usage?

Thanks for the file adm i'll give it a read.

[delboy]

What did you think of using this method Delboy? Are the benefits worth the extra hop usage?

Thanks for the file adm i'll give it a read.

Not so long ago i would have given an unreserved yes as an answer to that, but with the price of hops lately and it being such an inefficent method of bittering i would have to think about it. But if you have a glut of hops that need using up or you are one of those people that love lots of hop profile without lots of bitterness (thats me that is ) then its a great technique.
As adm says though you might want to marry it with a degree of FWH which will be a little more economical on the hops.