I wondered if there was a standard hop addition ratio. I notice a lot of recipes seem to add most BU at the bittering stage but is there a scientific, or just instinctive reason behind this?
Does it all depend on the beer yer trying to make?
I shall at some point have a go at a pale ale with bittering units split equally between the bittering hop addition and the flavour hop addition, unless there is a very good reason not to do this? I presume that the beer will have a lot more hop flavour than one made up to the same IBU but with say a aratio of 2:1 in favour of the bittering addition.
Hop addition ratio
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GrowlingDogBeer
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Re: Hop addition ratio
The earlier in the boil you add the hops the more bitterness you extract from them, but less hop flavour as this gets boiled off.
The later in the boil you add the hops the more hop flavour is retained in the beer, but you extracyt less bitterness from the hops.
Essentially you should look to get most of your bitterness out of early hop additions, and most of your flavour out of late hop additions.
Of course thats only a guideline, and guidelines are there to be ignored, so it would be perfectly acceptable to put all your hops in the boil for the last 5 minutes only, as long as their is enough Bitterness in them that you will get enough bitterness in your beer after just 5 minutes.
There are lots of ways of varying when and how many hop additions to make, but the general rule is the early additions give you the bitterness, and the later additions give you flavour.
To work out how much bitterness you will extract at what stage use one of the Beer Calculators like Beer Engine to tell you how much bitterness you will extract.
The later in the boil you add the hops the more hop flavour is retained in the beer, but you extracyt less bitterness from the hops.
Essentially you should look to get most of your bitterness out of early hop additions, and most of your flavour out of late hop additions.
Of course thats only a guideline, and guidelines are there to be ignored, so it would be perfectly acceptable to put all your hops in the boil for the last 5 minutes only, as long as their is enough Bitterness in them that you will get enough bitterness in your beer after just 5 minutes.
There are lots of ways of varying when and how many hop additions to make, but the general rule is the early additions give you the bitterness, and the later additions give you flavour.
To work out how much bitterness you will extract at what stage use one of the Beer Calculators like Beer Engine to tell you how much bitterness you will extract.