So you want to make/clone a hoppy beer.

You are a hop-head.

Hops may or may not have been what got you into drinking beer, but now you long for more.

To you, hops are another reason why your passion for beer has been rekindled, and subsequently your zest for life.

You may have tried making a few hoppy beers, but just haven't made one hoppy enough to quench your hop thirst.

And maybe, like me, you've tried and failed, but succeeded in scrubbing the bitterness taste-buds off of your palette along the way.

Before I go on, I must say that I understand bitterness. I also understand that bitterness rating equations, whether HBU or IBU, are inherently flawed from the get go, as is any scale derived by an individual to grasp or label the perceptions of the masses. That's not to say they can't be successfully used as a ballpark tool. But...let me just say.

I don't care about bitterness ratings.

I just want more hops in my beer.

And I won't be satisfied until it literally affects my eyesight, but not because I drank too many.

Once upon a time, I had a beer so full of hoppy goodness that my visual perception of the world actually tinted green, and that affect has become my goal, hop induced hallucinations, or as I like to call them...

Hoplucinations.

(And if any brewery steals this name from me, I will sue you until you see RED. This post is proof of my innovation of the word hoplucinations.)



Anyway, you really want to amp up the hop presence in your beer, and know that the only way to do that is to add more hops.

But how?

The answer is limitless, but I have used three techniques that work well.

A. First Wort Hopping (adding bittering hops to the prior to boil for an increase in hop flavor similar to a 20 minute flavor addition)
2. Hop-bursting (replacing/reducing bittering hop additions with excessive amounts of flavor/aroma hop additions for desird bitterness units)
D. Hopback (filtering boiling wort through whole hops or hop leaves)

More information on each technique is readily available online. I suggest that you research them before you use them.

I am more interested in recipe formulation/replication.

The following walk-through is yet another way to go about formulating the hop bill of a recipe, be it a clone recipe or not.

For this, I will use Goose Island IPA as the target beer of the subject matter, because they were nice enough to tell the world how many hops they use in their IPA, on average.


From the video on the weir website, Goose Island uses around 4# hops in a barrel of their IPA, so that breaks down like so...

4.00# hops = 64 oz hops in 31 gallons = 1 barrel
2.25# hops = 32 oz hops, 15.5 gallons = 1/2 barrel = 1 keg
0.64# hops = 10.3 oz hops, 5 gallons

Their website also lists Styrian Goldings, Fuggles, Cascades, and Centennials as the varieties they use for a total bitterness rating of 55 IBU.

So now you know what kind and how many hops they use, but you don't know how much of each kind they use, or how they use it.

Whether you are trying to make a clone, or your invent own, the only way to figure out how and how much hop presence you want in your batch is to sit down and drink beer. Damnit.

First, familiarize yourself with the flavors & aromas of the hops you most want to come forward in your beer. If you don't know how each individual hop tastes/smells in your target beer style, the best way to figure it out is to either make some different hop teas with a few pellets, or buy/brew a single hop beer. For example, centennial hops are the single hop variety used in Founders Centennial IPA and Bell's Two-Hearted Ale, and for cascade hops Sierra Nevada pale ale is the benchmark

Goose island IPA is the only really hoppy beer I know of that uses Styrian Goldings. However, they are genetically a derivative of the English hop variety Fuggles grown in Slovenia, and have been described as pleasantly spicy and earthy.

Fuggles also come across a little spicy/funky/earthy, and a good beer that uses predominantly fuggles is Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale. But not their IPA, in which Phoenix and Progress hops are used.


To come up with the hop profile for a clone recipe of Goose Island IPA, I would try to taste/estimate the strength of the individual hops as they present themselves while drinking the beer.

I would go buy a six-pack, and let it warm to about 55 degrees. That's the temperature when all the hop flavor/aroma really start to bloom for my palette. Then I'd sit down with a notepad and estimate the flavors by percentage, and my notes may read something like this...

Centennial = 40% of total hop flavor, 20% of total aroma
Cascade = 50% total hop flavor, 40% total hop aroma
Styrian Goldings & Fuggles = 10% total hop flavor, 40% total hop aroma

Then I would adjust my hop additions to reflect these amounts. Of my total hop weight for hop flavor additions I would use 40% in centennial, 50% cascade, 20% Fuggle/Golding, and then do the same with the aroma additions. Of course, I would still have to play with all of the weights until I hit the desired bitterness numbers as calculated by the not too precise HBU/IBU equations.


I can tell you from my personal experience as a home-brewer that the only way to use 10 ounces of hops in a 5 gallon batch of 6% ABV beer, and keep it down to 55 IBUs is to utilize a technique called hop-bursting. When hop-bursting, you add most or all of your hops in the last 20-30 minutes of the boil. Most or all of your bitterness will come from these late additions, but, since you are under-utilizing the bittering potential of the hops, you won't have to worry about making your beer overly-bitter beer.

But be warned...experience has shown me that 10 ounces of hops will absorb nearly a gallon of wort, and the only way to accommodate for this is to design your recipe for a final volume of 6 gallons.

I have found that by first-wort hopping with a small amount of a high alpha hop to hit roughly 50% of the target IBU, and then hop-burst the rest in @ 15 minutes, 5 minutes, flameout, etc. will save some $ and wort volume.

If you bothered to read all of this, I'm sorry for your loss.

Brew on
Ben

To me it looks like you have a great presentation for the June meeting. Are you up for it? 10 - 15 minutes is all you need to prepare for. These are the types of things Alan and I have been discussing for each meeting. A 10 to 15 minute presentation on a subject. And yes, I read through it all because it is interesting.

Did you mention a Randall... Like a filter canister full of leaf hops attached to the keg of finished beer when serving.... massive hop hit.... hoptacular!

Good point Rick,

I intentionally left out the Randall prospect because of the necessity of kegging capabilities to utilize one.

I figured the brew-day additions I listed were attainable by everyone in one way or another, even a poor man's hop-back (straining boiling wort through a strainer full of whole/leaf hops) can be done by all, even those still getting their feet wet in the home-brewing process...

I also neglected dryhopping, hop tea infusions, and hop tea in the secondary/keg.

Dry hopping, hopefully everyone knows of.

Hop tea is self explanatory, make tea with hops, add to secondary/keg. I have found though, that making a tea out of your bittering hops before adding them to the boil will give you the ability to save their aroma characteristics. I then add the tea to the kettle at flameout.

BTW, if anyone has any other ideas of how to add more hop goodness, let me know, I'd love to try anything that pertains.

Chris, it would be my pleasure...even though it would basically be me repeating the bullet points of this post, but I can bring the cocktail shaker hop-back I built for a visual aide.

I can even make it an ongoing presentation.

Bob and I have talked of doing a string of single-hop pale ales. I could get adventurous and dedicate certain hopping techniques to different hop varieties. For example, hop-backed ales would depend on what whole leaf hops I have on hand, hop-bursting limited to bulk hops on hand or high alpha hop varieties...etc.

I would then bring samples.

Food for thought = fuel for the fire.

Hop tea is self explanatory, make tea with hops, add to secondary/keg. I have found though, that making a tea out of your bittering hops before adding them to the boil will give you the ability to save their aroma characteristics. I then add the tea to the kettle at flameout.

Hmmmm..... thanks for that tip. Thats a new one to me. Especially the part about adding a tea at flameout.

I recently dry hopped in the keg for the first time. But you need a way to get them out. I used a stainless tea ball I got from Wally-mart. It worked OK. I really like the hop tea idea.

When I dry hop in the keg, I just use a steeping grain bag. I tie dental floss to it, regular not minted. The dental floss is so thin that the keg will still seal. Easy way to take them out.

Water chemestry can have a HUGE imact on the way a beer is percieved. For hoppy beers a proper chloride to sulfate ratio will make it go from good to HOLY SHIT!!! Sodium also plays a role here as well because it fight with the sulfate, keep the level low. I personally use the following water for anything from a 4-7 estimated SRM beer (tweak the carbonate levels to fit the expected SRM of the beer to get the proper PH in your mash).

"The Hoppy"
Calcium - 125ppm
Magnesium - 20ppm
Sodium - 14ppm
Chloride - 50ppm
Sulfate - 274ppm
Bicarb - 70ppm

If you have any questions please dont hesitate to ask.

A few good resources for water chemestry info are:
How To Brew by John Palmer (Chapter 15)
Brewstrong (podcast put on by The Brewing Network with 4 episodes about water chemestry. Excellent knowledge from these guys (Palmer and Jamil)on many topics!)

I would like to formulate general water adjustments for my water.

I have Chicago water so it is fairly neutral, but I don't know what adjustments I need to do for the styles I want to brew.

According to palmer, my water is perfect for beers around 14 -16 srm, but I want to setup a general base of adjustments for pilsner/lagers from 4-7 srm, hoppy beers from 7-10 srm, american stouts from 22-27 srm, and imperial stouts from 30-35 srm.

I played around with a printout of the nomograph from the "how to brew", so I know how much to adjust, but don't know the proper additives to use, or the amounts thereof.

Once I have these established, I can just reference a personal adjustment list, and away I go.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated, Chris.

Thanks again
Ben

+1.... on what Ben said.

I don't understand how to measure PPM for a given volume of water.

This is my absolute favorite water calculator. It gives you the amounts of brewing salts in teaspoon/tablespoon measurements.

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Tweaking water profiles is a bit of an art in and of itself. Look at the BJCP style guide and look for cues that hint to how it needs to be(malty, balanced, hoppy/bitter). Some styles will call for a soft water (pils) and some a hard water(IPA) and this is reflected both in the bicarbonate levels and calcium levels.