Boost Your Hop Aroma (Part 1 of 3)

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Homegrown hops in Bastrop, TX.

Hoppy beers are all the rage these days, and brewers are always looking for ways to get more hop character in their beer. I’d like to discuss maximizing hop aroma, by focusing not only on ways to add hops to beer, but how hop character is removed from beer during the brewing process. I’d also like to propose another method of adding hops to beer. (This isn’t completely new. I’ve mentioned it before, but it isn’t well-known or widely used.)

We all know of a variety of ways to add hops to beer. You can add hops before the boil (first wort hopping). You can add hops during the boil. You can add hops after the boil (in the whirlpool or filter your wort through a hop jack). You can add hops in the fermenter or keg (dry hop). You can push your beer through a Randall. You can even add hops in your mash. But let’s take a look at what happens to the compounds from the hops as the brewing process continues.

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This Week’s Beer News (January 6–11, 2014)

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St. Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts. Home of the Spencer brewery, the first Trappist brewery in the US. (Photo by John Phelan, via Wikipedia, under Creation Commons license.)

The United States is poised to get its first Trappist brewery. The brothers at St. Joseph’s abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts are brewing and Spencer Trappist Ale and is due out this week. Meanwhile, in Iceland, a brewery is coming under fire for releasing a beer brewed with whale meat.

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Measurements to Record: II

This is the second part of a two-part series on measurements to record on brew day

 

photoOne piece of equipment that almost every homebrewer has is a hydrometer. In addition, many have a pH meter (or at least pH papers). Both of these tools can give you valuable information on brewday.

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Imperial Tripel (Recipe Stage)

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What this tripel might look like, if all goes well.

This is a beer I plan to brew for the first time in 2014. I plan to brew it, taste the beer, tweak it and rebrew — and of course document this process on Beer and Wine Journal. The idea behind this beer is to take a Belgian-style Tripel, and crank it up a notch or two. I want to brew a pale beer, with a final gravity low enough not to be too sweet or be overly full-bodied. I plan to use reiterated mashing to generate the wort, because this will minimize the color. I also plan to hop it at a higher rate than a tripel, to compensate for the added strength. I’ll brew the beer in a couple weeks, but for now, here’s the recipe.

By the way, the name is just a Star Wars reference. (They can’t all be winners.)

 

Palpatine’s Tripel

(imperial tripel)

by Chris Colby

 

DESCRIPTION

A higher-gravity version of a Belgian tripel or Belgian golden ale, with added hop flavor and aroma. This beer is designed to be as light in color as possible (around 6 SRM), while still being 13% ABV. As with regular tripels, the beer has a low final gravity, given its alcoholic strength.

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Five Steps Towards Being a Better Brewer

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. . . being the fifth number.

One of the things that makes homebrewing great is the learning curve. Starting with simple malt extract beers, you can brew decent (even good) beer by simply following a set of instructions. However, for those willing to put in the effort, there are always ways to improve. If you want to become the best brewer possible, follow these five tips.

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Five Tips for Session Beer Brewers

gold-number-5It’s always great to have a real session beer in your lineup of taps. I’m a big fan of dry stouts, which I recently wrote a series on, and British-style bitters. Both are wonderful, flavorful beers and there are times when a lower alcohol (and lower Calorie) beer is just the thing. Brewing session beers at home is straightforward. However — as with any kind of beer — there are special considerations that help make the beer its best. Here are five tips for brewing session beers.

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IPA Experiment

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BREWING! SCIENCE!! BREWING SCIENCE!!!

The chloride-to-sulfate ratio in your brewing liquor influences the perception of your beer. Adding chloride to your water, usually in the form of calcium chloride, makes your beer more “rounded” and accentuates the malt. Adding sulfate, usually in the form of calcium sulfate (from gypsum), accentuates the hop bitterness. We’ve designed an experiment to test if this is true, if you can adjust this ratio in finished beer and which ratio works best in an IPA (or other hoppy ale). The last one is the biggie, here. The first idea is well-accepted and there’s anecdotal evidence that the second is true.

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Mjollnir Recipe

Mjollnir

This is an example of a beer brewed using the reiterated mash technique. This recipes makes for a long brewday, and there is a compromise between getting the best extract efficiency from each mash, which is important to reaching a high original gravity, and the amount of time spent. In addition, this is a challenging fermentation for the yeast. Do not skip making the yeast starter and do not forget to add yeast nutrients.

 

Mjollnir (Reiterated Mash)

English units

 

DESCRIPTION

A very strong beer that is light in color. If everything goes right, you will make a very fermentable wort on brewday and achieve a high degree of attenuation in the fermentation. This will make a beer that is full-bodied (but not overly chewy or sweet), well-balanced and very drinkable considering its strength.

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Dive Into Mead Making

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Honey is the basis of mead. But honey alone can be difficult to ferment. Making a fruit mead (or melomel) is a great way to get started with meadmaking.

Here is a mead recipe for first time meadmakers who would like to try something with a high probability of success. One problem with making mead from honey alone is that there may not be enough potassium in the honey to sustain a healthy fermentation. Additionally the pH of an all-honey mead must may initially be too low. This recipe combines honey with cherries, a fruit with relatively high potassium levels, and whose juice is in a suitable pH range. (The pH of sweet cherry juice ranges from 3.8–4.5). It also contains a small amount of grape juice, which also has fairly high potassium levels and whose juice pH will work well in a wine-like fermentation. (Most wine is made from grapes.) Even if the pH of the honey is low, the fruit juices are more highly-buffered, so it will not be a problem.

One thing that might make beer brewers nervous is the lack of sanitation. The mead must is not boiled, nor are Campden tablets used to inhibit microorganisms, as in winemaking. The “dump and stir” method, advocated by Ken Schramm and employed here, works if you keep everything that goes into your must or contacts the fruit as clean as possible.

This recipe uses staggered nutrient additions to speed the fermentation along. Mead does not require fermentations that span for 6 or more months, as was the norm in “old school” meadmaking. If the yeast are fed nutrients as they need them, and in the right quantities, a mead fermentation can proceed nearly as quickly as a beer fermentation and aging may take only several weeks.

Although this is a “beginner’s” recipe, the quality is not substandard. If you use fresh, flavorful cherries and quality honey, following the instructions here will produce a wonderful mead.

Meads made with fruit are called melomels, so you can call this either a cherry mead or a cherry melomel. (Meads made from only honey and grapes are sometimes called pyments.) This produces a mead of 12% ABV. It’s strong, but not so strong that it will tax the wine yeast and lead to a prolonged fermentation. If you’re interested in mead and have been looking for a place to start, consider this recipe.

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Stone Double Dry Hopped Ruination Clone

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Stone Ruination IPA, a classic double IPA. Stone Brewing Co. also released some double dry hopped versions of this beer.

Do you like hoppy beers? Well then here’s one for you — Stone’s Ruination IPA (a double IPA) with a double dry hop option. A lot of hops go into this beer, so you’ll want to think about how to separate the wort from the hop debris — whether by giving the chilled wort time to settle, bagging the hops, using a hop screen in the kettle or a hop jack before the chiller. Secondly, try to expose the beer to as little oxygen as possible when dry hopping to retain the freshest hop aroma. This recipe is presented in both all-grain and extract (partial mash) versions, in both English and metric units.

 

Stone Double Dry Hopped Ruination IPA Clone

(Double IPA)

All-grain version, English units

recipe from Mitch Steele, Brewmaster, Stone Brewing Co.

 

DESCRIPTION

Described by Stone as, “A liquid poem to the glory of the hop,” Ruination is big, hoppy double IPA with a huge hop aroma. Stone has also released Ruination in a few Double Dry Hopped versions.

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