Making hops pop

[hoppyscotty]

so 5 brews into my home brew career now. I've done a few hoppy beers and they've been a success. Very good in fact - I've enjoyed drinking them immensely and finding myself reaching for a bottle of home brew over a bottle of a commercial beer more and more. However one area I'm slightly disappointed in is getting that fresh hop flavour in the hoppy beers. I've done a NEIPA, Hopped stout and just cracked open the first bottle of a BrewDog Punk clone and in all though the hop flavour has been there, it's not quite been as 'poppy' or bright as I was looking for and this has been highlighted with a back to back taste of the Punk clone vs. the real thing. Flavour wise it was quite close...you'd certainly recognise it as punk-like, but the hops in the real thing are just so much brighter and fresher. So what can I do to try to get that level of hop freshness in my home brews? Maybe up the amount of late addition hops relative to what the recipe demands? or a gadget like a Hop Rocket or Hop Missile?

Thanks.
Edit: forgot to mention and might be relevant - so far I've been brewing with all grain ingredients kits using a Brewzilla. And bottling into glass bottles. Though the Punk clone was a stove top boil in a bag all grain kit I got for Christmas. Always used pellet hops so far.

 

[chrisb8]

Do you treat your water? Having a suitable water profile will help to match the style you are aiming for. If you haven't done so already perhaps have a look at @strange-steve's guides on water treatment.

 

[iz_g]

I'd love to know the answer to this too...

Like you, I've brewed many hoppy beers (although admittedly my tastes are more malt-wise), and although I've had some great successes, I've never quite achieved that 'modern' craft beer uber fresh hoppy taste. I suspect it's partly due to a vast quantity of hops. Maybe a hopback, as you say?

One thing I have noticed... some breweries do the fresh hop flavour, some don't. Several (very good) micro breweries in my area have never, as far as I am aware, put it into their beers.

 

[grooves]

For brighter hop character try -

keep the mash pH higher = 5.3 - 5.5,
keep the sulfate to chloride ratio at around 3:1
use a clean fermenting yeast (my favourite = WLP028)
keep hop additions late in the boil (last 20 mins)
dry hop (dry hop cold, once, and for less than a week - that's my take on it)
flush keg/bottles with CO2
do a closed transfer to a keg
neck it all quickly

I've got a hopback but rarely use it - I may have to try it again, but dry hopping seemed to work better for me.

I really recommend getting into water treatment/mash pH control - it will make a world of difference to your beers, second only to fermentation temperature control.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Brill thanks chaps and you’ve got a few points I was suspecting. Water additions for example but I had not really concentrated on ph so something to focus on.

What do people think of the water treatment calculators like the one in the Brewfather app for sample? I’ve been relying on the analysis of my source water vs target profile as given by Brewfather and trusting that implicitly. Is this ok or do I need to do more research in this area?

 

[noahh]

All good points above. But I think oxidisation is a huge one with the early fading of hop flavour and aroma. That flavour can be achieved in bottle conditioned beer, just look at Kernel, but it’s usually in canned and force carbonated beer.

Kegging, oxygen free transfer from fermenter to keg, no secondary, flushing with CO2 at dry hop, almost all the kettle hops in the whirlpool, all of these help.

If you do bottle, have a read into additions of ascorbic acid and sodium meta bisulphate at bottling to help scavenge oxygen.

 

[Drunkula]

Brulosophy and Genus brewing have been adding tiny amounts of metabisulphite and vitamin C at kegging and say it preserves hop character. I tried it and even though it was a tiny amount the booze smelled like dog farts.

 

[grooves]

What do people think of the water treatment calculators like the one in the Brewfather app for sample? I’ve been relying on the analysis of my source water vs target profile as given by Brewfather and trusting that implicitly. Is this ok or do I need to do more research in this area?

I use the same (or sometimes still Beersmith) using my water company's water report from their website and the generic target profiles yellow balanced/ amber bitter etc from Brunwater Download Bru'n Water

 

[Jj86]

The simple things that you can do is to use hops that are as fresh as possible. Generally speaking if they smell great they will usually taste great. Using certain hops will increase hop taste and aroma. Citra, Galaxy, Simcoe, amarillo, Nelson Savin, moteuka, azecca and Bravo come to mind.

When are you hopping? Want something super hoppy why not just do a 1/3 first wort addition then a 20 minute hop stand at 70 degree C.


What other people have said about not doing a secondary and avoiding any splashing of transferring into a bottling bucket.

Also I’ve found if you use hop bags they don’t allow all the hops to get into suspension and give a duller hop taste.

When you dry hop your beer take samples. Find out what works for you. Some beers taste super hoppy after a day and others will take 10 days.

I’d personally stay away from neipa until you have kegs. You can make hoppy beer and I wouldn’t worry too much about the oxygen absorption in bottles - you already have yeast and sugar in the bottle and the yeast will metabolise the sugar and use most of not all of the O2 in suspension. What I do is before I cap the bottle I will fill it and put the cap on top of the bottle and leave it until I have filled all the bottles. Hopefully the small amount of CO2 forms blows off some of the air in the top of the bottle.

Water chemistry really does help. Bit after 5 brews I’d concentrate on getting your process down and try new things that are cheaper! You can always use bottled water with low mineral content and low bicarbonate for now if you are worried.

 

[crescent city Mike]

Another thing you might try is first wort hopping. Just move about 20% of your hops into the kettle and collect the wort directly on them. Many of the oils in the hops chemically bond in the heating wort and are mostly not driven off by the boil.

 

[Clint]

Dog farts...
Could call it The Dogfarter...

 

[matt76]

@hoppyscotty 65 AG batches in and I'm still trying to answer this one, so good luck! Just remember this is not an exact science, not least because there are so many variables from one brewer and their gear & ingredients to the next.....

For brighter hop character try -

keep the mash pH higher = 5.3 - 5.5,
keep the sulfate to chloride ratio at around 3:1
use a clean fermenting yeast (my favourite = WLP028)
keep hop additions late in the boil (last 20 mins)
dry hop (dry hop cold, once, and for less than a week - that's my take on it)
flush keg/bottles with CO2
do a closed transfer to a keg
neck it all quickly

I've got a hopback but rarely use it - I may have to try it again, but dry hopping seemed to work better for me.

I really recommend getting into water treatment/mash pH control - it will make a world of difference to your beers, second only to fermentation temperature control.

@grooves I'm gonna contradict you on some of these points, not because I want to argue with you but because I think it helps illustrate what a minefield this is.....

Mash pH - Scott Janish has mentioned in his blog he preferred lower pH in higher ABV beers, but higher pH in lower ABV beers. But it's subjective - one of my plans with my less satisfactory recent beers is to try adding drop of acid and maybe a pinch of gypsum to see what happens.

Sulphate : Chloride ratio - agreed for WC AIPA for example, but the advice for NEIPAs seems to be the exact opposite!

Yeast - Agree that there are really good clean yeasts, but it's surprising how many NEIPA brewers seem to use WY1318 for example, and I also see some examples where less clean strains like this work for WC AIPAs. M36 has yielded some nice hoppy beers for me and I plan to experiment more with WY1318. But I've also had success with clean yeasts like WY1056, WY1272, US-05, M44 and BRY-97.

Hop additions - I think there are no hard and fast rules on this anymore, and I think it depends what you want to achieve. Sometimes I add more traditional bittering hops, sometimes only late hops and at some point I want to experiment with only adding hops after flameout.

Same goes for dry hopping, no hard and fast rules - dry hop at yeast pitch, high krausen, after fermentation, single vs. double dry hop etc etc etc. I'm currently experimenting with short cold dry hopping myself - no conclusions yet but thus far I think I've been doing it too cold so need to try again.

Oxygen exposure - Agreed, one thing that does seem clear is you want to minimise oxygen exposure. I bottle all my beers and have no interest in kegging so personally I wouldn't bother trying to make a NEIPA again. I can be done in bottles but I'd rather spend my time & money making a WC AIPA which personally I think I prefer and seems like a safer bet.