[Brew in need of rescue] How much hop tea to add to brew?

[andyakameatloaf]

I brewed a few weeks back and I've just come to bottle it today.
OG was 1056, FG is 1008, which would weight it in at about 6.3%, way over what I wanted, and an apparent attenuation of 85%.
Looks well and smells very hoppy, but none of my flavour from the 20min hop additions is present.
I think its because the hops were quite old. They were 2012 harvest and had been open in a kilner jar for 6 months...
I want to attempt to rescue it and add some flavour, but I'm unsure how.
I have a fresh unopened vacpac of Citra hops, thought about boiling say 20-30g for 20 minutes and using it to melt my priming sugar just before bottling, but I'm unsure of how much water to boil it in to achieve a decent enough amount of flavour to affect my 20l brew lenght.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[PD]

nothing wrong in dry hopping for a few days before bottling

 

[andyakameatloaf]

its been dry hopped for a week already mate, its affected the arome, but still no flavour :/

 

[Rolfster]

When I hop tea I add the hops to water that has been boiled and is cooling (say 80 degrees) and leave it for half an hour or so.

As for the amount of liquid to use I asked the same question the other day!

See here viewtopic.php?f=36&t=43681

Also don't forget that tha hops will hold onto some of the liquid. DON'T be tempted to squeeze the hops out. It can give the beer a really bitter aftertaste (try licking your fingers after weighing out your hops for an idea of what its like!).
I did and now I have an alright beer, that I know could have been much better.
R

 

[andyakameatloaf]

When I hop tea I add the hops to water that has been boiled and is cooling (say 80 degrees) and leave it for half an hour or so.

As for the amount of liquid to use I asked the same question the other day!

See here viewtopic.php?f=36&t=43681

Also don't forget that tha hops will hold onto some of the liquid. DON'T be tempted to squeeze the hops out. It can give the beer a really bitter aftertaste (try licking your fingers after weighing out your hops for an idea of what its like!).
I did and now I have an alright beer, that I know could have been much better.
R

Cheers for the link mate - I'm sure that will come in handy in the future, however for the minute it's not the strength I'm having issue with - I mentioned it just in the way that I wouldn't mind if adding a hop tea waters the strength down a bit.

What I'm really after is either a calculation or someone's know how from experience of how much hops to boil in how much water in order to add adequate flavour back into what was originally a 20l brew length.

(I should also mention that ideally I don't want the ABV to come down past about 5%)

 

[Rolfster]

OK.

Have you seen this?

http://www.homebrewjunkie.com/2008/10/h ... pping.html

Thought it was quite interesting, and is what I have based my hop tea's on.
I am settled on about 1L for mine, unless I am trying to make the beer weaker!

R

 

[andyakameatloaf]

OK.

Have you seen this?

http://www.homebrewjunkie.com/2008/10/h ... pping.html

Thought it was quite interesting, and is what I have based my hop tea's on.
I am settled on about 1L for mine, unless I am trying to make the beer weaker!

R

interesting read, cheers for the link!

I must admit, I always thought that dry hopping only gave aroma, not flavour :wha:.
Either way, since mine's been dry hopped for 7 days as of tomorrow and it seemingly hasn't worked, I think I'll give the hop tea a bash.

30g in about 1.5 litres of water with my priming solution added at the start I think should do the trick, unless anyone can suggest a better idea by tomorrow evening :grin:

And since im pretty sure it was old hops that caused this to happen, looks like I have an excuse to put another brew on

 

[andyakameatloaf]

Well, today I decided to try to rescue it.
Boiled 30g of Citra for 20 mins in 2L of water, left to steep off the heat for 10 minutes, then added 115g sucrose as my priming sugar and dissolved in before pouring into bottling bucket and siphoning my beer on top.

Managed to get about 19 litres of 6.1% out of a 20 l brew length, so pretty happy with that.
There was also a little left that wouldn't fill a bottle, so sampled it and it I'm impressed. It's still not got the level of hoppiness that I wanted, but it is certainly better than before, and all in all the best beer I've brewed so far.

Learned a lot on this brew. Left it for a lot longer, and the difference it noticeable immediately. It had 3 weeks fermenting, the last week with a 25g dry hop, so noticing the difference I'm going to (try to) leave it to condition for much longer than I usually do.

This was also my first full brew that I've bottled, which was definitely a learning curve!

 

[Rolfster]

Sounds good!

I have just got a bigger boiler, which means more beer and more bottling
I brewed 35L yesterday :thumb:

 

[Duxuk]

I like what you did. Dry hopping, or hops added at "flameout" (maybe an inappropriate term after 3 weeks of fermentation!), add something but those flavours and aromas fade quickly. You need to boil for some time to "fix" the flavours. I've done a lot of experimenting this year and have achieved much higher flavours with boiled hops for flavour, when compared to bittering, flameout and dry hop only brews. I'll write a separate post about my experiences, to throw the Jack Russell amongst the rats, soon.

 

[Slid]

I like what you did. Dry hopping, or hops added at "flameout" (maybe an inappropriate term after 3 weeks of fermentation!), add something but those flavours and aromas fade quickly. You need to boil for some time to "fix" the flavours. I've done a lot of experimenting this year and have achieved much higher flavours with boiled hops for flavour, when compared to bittering, flameout and dry hop only brews. I'll write a separate post about my experiences, to throw the Jack Russell amongst the rats, soon.

That would be very interesting