Hoppy APAs and leaving the hops in the wort during fermentation.

[Tony1951]

About six or seven weeks ago, I was brewing a hoppy APA and my boiler filter clogged up. Since I was working on a foul night up the garden in the shed and in the poor light of a 60watt incandescent bulb, I got disgusted and more or less giving up, I just baled the whole contents of the boiler into the FV, carried it down to the house and pitched the US05 yeast into it.........

I wasn't expecting much, but after a fortnight, as I tasted the trial jar before bottling, I knew I had a winner. There is no doubt that this technique - accidental though it was, produced the best beer I ever made. I have repeated the process a couple of days ago the day after Boxing Day to confirm that it wasn't just a fortunate accident. The beer is absolutely bursting with gorgeous hoppy freshness, but not so in your face as to make you want to stop after one bottle. Just to be clear, it sat for two weeks in the FV with the entire contents of the turned off boiler, hops, trub and all and the flavour is a revelation.

Here is the recipe:

5.8kg Pale Malt
145g Crystal Malt

32g Magnum 13% @ 60 minutes
15g Citra 13% @10 minutes
15g Centennial 10.3% @ 10 minutes
44g Citra 13% AFTER TURN OFF AT 80c for 30 mins then cooled to 20c
45g Centennial 10.3% AFTER TURN OFF AT 80C for 30 mins then cooled to 20C

I got an original gravity of 1056 and with US05 it brewed out to 1010 and produced a finished volume of 20 litres from about 27 litres before the boil.

Happy New Year to all members and readers.

 

[stevej]

I bloody love Citra Tony, where do you live again :lol:

 

[clibit]

I bloody love Centennial. A long post boil steep of those two hops will make a lovely hoppy brew. I chill my brews in the sink and pour them into the FV maybe a couple of hours after flame out. Sometimes it's an hour sometimes it's more than two hours. I like the long steep, but I make sure the temp drops below 80 quickly if I used high alpha late hops.

 

[LarryF]

Tony, firstly 6.2%, that's my kind of beer. When I've been doing my kits I've been boiling 30-40g of whichever hop I'm going with and then adding the tea and the full hop bag to the FV for the whole fermentation and I'm loving the flavours I'm getting.

 

[Tony1951]

All great fun this long steep lark... Not sure a fortnight counts as a long steep though Clibit... :) Maybe more of a REALLY long steep. I've been stirring the pile of Centennial in every morning, they look great - all shiny and covered in USO5 and buoyant and such a lovely aroma.

I must be loosing the plot... I just looked back over my posts and I made a thread about this same subject about a month ago, but I do urge you guys to try this madcap approach. When people drink this their eyes open wide and they look at me like I am the God of Beer. :) Which as you know, is a bit of a stretch, because as we know there is only one God of Beer and his name is Clibit... LOL


Edit - yes Larry i used a citra tea bag or two, only when I started this Boxing Day Brew aiming to replicate exactly the recipe above, I opened my hop filing cabinet and discovered a dearth of citra, so on the last addition where I needed 45 grammes of the divine hop (C) I only had 20g left so I opened a pack of Cascade and put 25g of that alongside the 20g of Citra and let that be part of the long steep (14 days lol).

You know where I live Steve :)

I will let you know how it turns out

 

[Twostage]

I've done a test brew with hops in for the full fermentation (it was a turbo beer) they just floated at the top until I cold crashed it when they sank. Still added a nice hoppyness though. I did it after reading the 'hops' book, it makes you think there is no wrong way of using hops.

I've thought of a way of making hop bombs to keep them at the bottom using hair curlers and marbles but I haven't tested it yet. I'll post when I do with pictures :)

 

[SiMania]

What was the clarity like?

 

[Tony1951]

I've done a test brew with hops in for the full fermentation (it was a turbo beer) they just floated at the top until I cold crashed it when they sank. Still added a nice hoppyness though. I did it after reading the 'hops' book, it makes you think there is no wrong way of using hops.

I've thought of a way of making hop bombs to keep them at the bottom using hair curlers and marbles but I haven't tested it yet. I'll post when I do with pictures :)

On getting the flavour out of the hops by sinking them, in the brew I was talking about, at the end of the two weeks in the fermenter, I used a large sieve maybe eight inches across to scoop out the floating centennial (most of the others were pelleted hops and vanished into the trub I think). I got three full heaped sieves out and squeezed each one out into the brew so the fragrant fluids went into the beer. Then I carefully syphoned the brew off the trub into a bottling bucket with the carbonating syrup in the bottom. I say 'syrup' but it was just the 5gm/litre of white sugar in about 250ml of boiling water. This lot mixed in the bucket with a stir and then went into the flip top bottles I have and I kept it at about 20C for two weeks and then dumped it in the garage ready to be drunk as required. It was fine after a week in there and there is very little of it left now.

 

[Twostage]

Made a brew today and put my patent pending hop bombs into practice :-

It uses hair curlers for the 'cage'. A marble in the bottom half weights it down with one of plastic pins from the curler set holding it in place. The hops are pellets so they can be fed in from the top. Then two pins (or half of the bottom pin and a second pin) hold the hops in place at the top.

They don't hold many hop pellets so I constructed four of them. Gave about 10 grams in total.

I would have preferred another colour but pink was the only choice.

 

[stevej]

Made a brew today and put my patent pending hop bombs into practice :-

It uses hair curlers for the 'cage'. A marble in the bottom half weights it down with one of plastic pins from the curler set holding it in place. The hops are pellets so they can be fed in from the top. Then two pins (or half of the bottom pin and a second pin) hold the hops in place at the top.

They don't hold many hop pellets so I constructed four of them. Gave about 10 grams in total.

I would have preferred another colour but pink was the only choice.

What about your hair though:-o

 

[Halfacrem]

Made a brew today and put my patent pending hop bombs into practice :-

It uses hair curlers for the 'cage'. A marble in the bottom half weights it down with one of plastic pins from the curler set holding it in place. The hops are pellets so they can be fed in from the top. Then two pins (or half of the bottom pin and a second pin) hold the hops in place at the top.

They don't hold many hop pellets so I constructed four of them. Gave about 10 grams in total.

I would have preferred another colour but pink was the only choice.

Do you spray it with Silvikrin to keep everything in place?:lol:

 

[Twostage]

What about your hair though:-o

What's left gets a regular No 1 with the shears :smile:

 

[stevej]

What's left gets a regular No 1 with the shears :smile:

Same here :lol:

 

[Twostage]

Wow :razz:

My brew has finished fermentation so I had a taste from the trial jar and it's the first time I've actually thought "wow" at the contents of a trial jar. It tastes great even before it's carbonated. Obviously the resident beer critic will need to pass judgement. :hmm:

The beer is a bitter based on (but not a clone of) Theakston's bitter fermented with SO4 and Nottingham, with four hop bombs. I'll post the recipe.

I'll be cold crashing tomorrow and kegging on Sunday. Can't wait.

 

[MyQul]

:hmm: Think I might have a go at this leaving my late hops in for the two weeks fermentation time instead of straining them out.

I made this today http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59455
and what I had planned to do tommorow as I haven't added my flavouring hops yet (due to no-chilling), was a 3L micro boil adding the 10 and 5 min additons then doing a hop tea instead of 0 min addition at bottling time
Normally I would strain the hops out of the micro boil before adding it back to the main body of wort but I think I'll just dump it all into the wort . Might do the 0min addition too and add extra hops as a hop tea at bottling time

 

[Tony1951]

:hmm: Think I might have a go at this leaving my late hops in for the two weeks fermentation time instead of straining them out.

I made this today http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59455
and what I had planned to do tommorow as I haven't added my flavouring hops yet (due to no-chilling), was a 3L micro boil adding the 10 and 5 min additons then doing a hop tea instead of 0 min addition at bottling time
Normally I would strain the hops out of the micro boil before adding it back to the main body of wort but I think I'll just dump it all into the wort . Might do the 0min addition too and add extra hops as a hop tea at bottling time

I hope it works out well for you Myqul. I have had this massive mat of hops sitting on my recent APA for two weeks exactly.

It is about two inches deep and every few days I have been stirring it in. Tomorrow is bottling day, but before I wrack it off, I am going to sieve these out and squeeze out the juices. Then I'll syphon off into a bottling bucket with 5gm / litre of table sugar for carbonation.

Hoppy? I expect so, but no taste trial until tomorrow when I do a gravity check.

 

[MyQul]

I hope it works out well for you Myqul. I have had this massive mat of hops sitting on my recent APA for two weeks exactly.

It is about two inches deep and every few days I have been stirring it in. Tomorrow is bottling day, but before I wrack it off, I am going to sieve these out and squeeze out the juices. Then I'll syphon off into a bottling bucket with 5gm / litre of table sugar for carbonation.

Hoppy? I expect so, but no taste trial until tomorrow when I do a gravity check.

That looks like the worst infection EVER! :lol:

I used pellets so hopefully they'll just sink and become part of the trub. I'm hoping for good things for this bitter. I'm going to add a hop tea too at bottling time

 

[Tony1951]

That looks like the worst infection EVER! :lol:

I used pellets so hopefully they'll just sink and become part of the trub. I'm hoping for good things for this bitter. I'm going to add a hop tea too at bottling time

LOL -

I once made a 10 litre IPA with pelleted hops and I fermented it in the stock pot. I have no idea where the hop fragments went, but the beer tasted bloody gorgeous after I racked it off and bottled it. I didn't actually get 10 litres because the whole trub and hops were I suppose at the bottom and were lefts as a sort of sludge. It was easy enough to avoid sucking that into the bottling bucket with the syphon and like I say - it was a really nice beer. I literally just took the stock pot off the hob, cooled it in the sink and pitched it with Gervin ale yeast, then two weeks later bottled the lot minus a sort of khaki sludge at the bottom which went down the outside drain. I'm sure the purists might be squirming at this cavalier approach, but what works works - no?

As I recall, Clibit said he'd done something similar. I had no spare FV at the time. That's why I did it.

 

[GHW]

I hope it works out well for you Myqul. I have had this massive mat of hops sitting on my recent APA for two weeks exactly.

It is about two inches deep and every few days I have been stirring it in. Tomorrow is bottling day, but before I wrack it off, I am going to sieve these out and squeeze out the juices. Then I'll syphon off into a bottling bucket with 5gm / litre of table sugar for carbonation.

Hoppy? I expect so, but no taste trial until tomorrow when I do a gravity check.

Does it not go mouldy? That would be my concern.

 

[MyQul]

LOL -

I once made a 10 litre IPA with pelleted hops and I fermented it in the stock pot. I have no idea where the hop fragments went, but the beer tasted bloody gorgeous after I racked it off and bottled it. I didn't actually get 10 litres because the whole trub and hops were I suppose at the bottom and were lefts as a sort of sludge. It was easy enough to avoid sucking that into the bottling bucket with the syphon and like I say - it was a really nice beer. I literally just took the stock pot off the hob, cooled it in the sink and pitched it with Gervin ale yeast, then two weeks later bottled the lot minus a sort of khaki sludge at the bottom which went down the outside drain. I'm sure the purists might be squirming at this cavalier approach, but what works works - no?

As I recall, Clibit said he'd done something similar. I had no spare FV at the time. That's why I did it.

I've read it's quite commont to ferment in the stock pot. I normally use an old coopers FV as a no chill cube. Then the following day rack the wort off the break material and into a clean FV. I then only have about a cm or two of yeast trub at the end of fermentation. I guess I get a bit more with the hop debris in there too