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Hopback vs Dry Hopping
I'm planning on making a clone of Troegs Hopback Amber from the BYO recipes page. The recipe calls for 1.2oz Nugget for 60min with all other hop additions going into a hopback. I've read that hopbacks are used solely to add aroma but the BYO recipe page says that Troeg's gets the full hop flavor in the beer via a hopback. So which is it?
If you don't have a hopback, is adding flavor hops and dryhopping an adequate replacement? I've thought about making/buying a hopback. Anyone here successfully make one?
I searched real quick for you and found this guys posting of making a hop back. http://oz.craftbrewer.org/Library/Gear/ … back.shtml The quick reading I found on BYO: [urlhttp://byo.com/mrwizard/890.html][/url] states that they don't feel there is all that much difference.
Personally I think it may have more to do with the rapid cooling of the wort to retain the flavor.
Hope this helps.
Sorry I messed up that BYO link here it is: http://byo.com/mrwizard/890.html
Yeah I found those sites as well when I was trying to research hopbacks. In the first site the guy says he thinks a hop back captures certain flavors and all aroma compounds and the BYO article says that there are 2 ways to hopback: vented and unvented; where an unvented hopback is more similar to dry hopping. None of which really goes into detail as to how much flavor, if any, is extracted from hops in a hopback. Most other sites I've come across mainly talk about using a hopback just for aroma.
What I guess I'm trying to find out is:
1. Will I be able to extract enough flavor using a hopback? Or will I still have to add flavoring hops?
2. If I chose to do a recipe that requires a hopback, can I substitute it with hops at 15 min left in the boil and dry hop?
If you don't get enough/any flavor from a hopback then I guess its not necessary at all because you could add flavoring hops to the boil and then dry hop, right?
hmmmm, sounds like new fangled science. Damn kids these days.
ha ha ha
I have no experience either way, but from what I read doing a quick search - sounds like the key to the hop back for extracting is hot wort and slow flow.
OK well I decided that I am going to brew this beer twice using two different methods. The first brew will be in a couple weeks without a hopback and then I'll brew again in a couple months after I have my new brew pot and homemade hopback.
What I'm going to do in the first brew is to use the 1.2oz Nugget for bittering like the recipe states but then take the .5oz Liberty, .25oz Simcoe, and .5oz Nugget and add them to the boil with 20 minutes left for flavor giving me a total of 54.8 IBUs (recipe calls for 55).
Now this leaves me with .3oz Nugget, .75oz Simcoe, and .5oz Liberty. I was thinking of using some as an aroma addition with a few minutes left in the boil and saving some to dry hop in the secondary. Is that enough hops to accomplish both? Anyone have any suggestions for this step?
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