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Can you get any flavor from bittering hops?
The other day I was listening to the Jamil show and he said something about how you can sometimes get flavors from bittering hops but he didn't go into much detail. The reason I'm asking is because I'm coming up with my next recipe (probably an IPA) and I want to use a bunch of left over hops from other batches for bittering because I thought all you got from bittering hops was, well, bittering. Can anyone out there offer any insight to this?
I have noticed some flavor character coming from beers I make with just a bittering addition. Jamil is talking about the difference between using a low alpha acid versus a high alpha acid hop for bittering. If you are making a beer where all you wanted was a bittering charge of say 40IBU. You may only need to use a fraction of an ounce to get it with a high AA hop, like magnum or centenial. But if you were to use a lower alpha hop, say and EKG or Saaz then you would need to use a lot more of it. Inevitable some of those hop characters will carry over into flavor because you used so much more of the lower AA hop to get the same 40IBU as bittering. So if you are brewing a style where the impact of hop flavor and aroma are not desired, Jamil prefers to use a smaller charge of high alpha hop to get the bitterness.
Obviously, that is not the concern with an IPA.
The common rule of 60min as a bittering only and 30 minutes is a flavoring only is something of a misconception. Every hop is a little different and just because you may add some hop at 30, doesn't mean there will be NO aroma quality, it just means there will be less than if you added it at 10min. The bittering, flavor and aroma are not tied to time in some absolute fashion. Getting plenty of bitterness from a huge addition (6oz) of hops at 15minutes is a great example of how we need to rethink the concept of where bitterness, aroma and flavor really come from.
I just checked my freezer and I'm going to plan on using 1.21oz Columbus, .45oz Simcoe and .20oz Nugget. These all seem like good bittering hops for an IPA. I'm only doing a 4 gallon boil so I need to bump up the quantity to hit the IBUs I want. I do have some Hallertauer, Saaz and Mt. Hood but maybe I'll hold onto those for a style more appropriate rather than just using them for bittering just because I have them. I like the idea of experimenting with one big late hop addition and plan on trying it soon enough.
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