Best aroma hops to use

[proost]

Been home brewing, mainly kits, for a while now and I'd like to experiment with hops that add aroma only. I don't like my beer too bitter.

Any views on what hops I can use?
What do they smell like?
When to add them?

I mainly brew bitters and stouts

Thanks chaps

 

[Spapro]

If you dry hop (ie. chucking some pellets into your brew 4 days before bottling) then you just get aroma !

You can use any hops, probably worth posting on here what commercial bitters you enjoy/buy and someone on here can advise which hop to dry hop with.

Also could be worth you getting Graham Wheelers book, his clone recipes would tell you which hops are used in which commercial beers - following the '0 minutes' hop addition as a dry hop would give you a start.

 

[Covrich]

Stouts you will want to possibly add roasted grains in a partial mash. Bitters if your making English bitters then I would stick with English hops like East Kent goldings or fuggles for example

 

[clibit]

This might give you some info/ideas:

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=52909

 

[MyQul]

If you make up a bland kit like a coopers APA or blonde you can then dry hop the bottles themselves (rather than dry hopping the FV) by opening up the bottles and dropping 1-2g of pellet hops (you can only do this with pellet hops not leaf) into the bottle the nrecapping. This means you can do lots of different varieties of hops with just the one kit/batch

 

[Bad_Gerbil]

Silly/basic question really. When dry hopping isn't there a danger of you adding unwanted bacteria at a late stage?
BG

 

[clibit]

It's one of the most common and understandable questions. Hops are used in beer for their effect on flavour but also their anti-bacterial qualities. Which is how IPAs were created, lots of dry hops and high alcohol were both used to reduce the chance of infection in transit.

And the experience of many home brewers backs this up.

 

[Bad_Gerbil]

Thought so, thank you. Excellent - my batch of "son of vole catcher" will get a dose tonight