Pages: 1 2
Using hops in your mash
I was looking at an old BYO magazine I have to get some ideas for a good IPA recipe. I found recipes for a lot of good IPAs like Dogfish Head 90 and Bells Two Hearted and Pliny the Elder. I noticed that the clone recipe for "Pliny the Elder" calls for 19.5 AAU of Chinook hops in the mash. Have any of you done this? I'm just curious what kind of complexity this adds to the beer. I would imagine that it probably won't add much in the way of flavor or aroma since they acids will be boiled for longer than any of the other hops in the beer. Just curious to see how this method has worked for others. I also heard the Bells brewery uses hops either in their mash or pre-boil. Thoughts?
I haven't tried this, but I have not heard a lot of good things about adding hops to the mash as you aren't actually boiling the hops, so you don't get much utilization from them. The general concensus I got was that it wasn't a great idea and was a bit of a waste of hops.
I've actually tried it a few times. Once while making a clone of Pliny the Elder (morebeer.com sells kits of several commercial beers). It didn't create any noticeable flavor for me, but most beers that use mash hopping are also first-wort hopping, adding tons of hops in the boil, and dry hopping so it would be tought to pick out a trait given by the mash hops. The people who claim mash hopping works say it lends depth to the hop flavor profile, I couldn't tell.
I hae first wort hopped, and I see how this works just fine. The problem I have with mash hopping is that you remove the hops before you boil them. You won't get any bitterness out of the hops, and you drive off any aromas you would get by then boiling the wort. It just doesn't seem like it should work any way you try to look at it, which is why I have never tried it.
In theory it still works to add hop flavor. Bitterness is easy, throw hops in during the boil. Aroma and flavor are more complicated. First-wort hopping isn't that much different, you add hops at essentially mash temps (~170) before the boil, yet first wort hopping is done to add flavor, some of the hop oils do survive the boil, the more contact with hops you have the more of that flavor comes through. I think it's more a gimmick than anything for mega hop-heads. The only way to truly test it would be to only mash hop, and see what the results are, I'm not wasting a batch on it though.
This is kind of what I was thinking. Thanks for your thoughts.
I've never done hops in the mash. I've done first wort a couple of times and honestly didn't see much difference in the final beer. Zymurgy had an article on this a while back, where on one hand they could show no science behind first wort hopping, but in blind taste tests beer that had been FWH'd was judged as having more hop flavor.
I find just a good strong hop in the boil and some nice floral hop in the secondary makes for a nice IPA/
I haven't been able to tell much difference in using those hop techniques either. I have let people try beer that has been mash hopped and they seemed to think it had more hop flavor.
Has anyone else heard that if you put hops into either your mash or preboil it will help prevent boil overs? I can't remember where I heard that, some podcast I think.
Yeah, they say the extra oils will help knock down the foam. I don't believe it, they also say to add oil to a pot of boiling water for past and it doesn't help with boiling over.
Pages: 1 2