Late (Aroma) Hop Addition Experiments

Jeremy and I brewed a clone of Epic Pale Ale (recipe from The Brewing Network's Can You Brew It) a few months ago. It was awesome. You can see the recipe here. It's not a standard pale ale.

The most noteworthy and interesting part of the beer was the different ways in which the brewer talked about using hops. (All US Cascade.) The recipe calls for two flame-out additions: a big flame-out addition held for a ten minute whirlpool, and then another big addition in another ten minute whirlpool. It sounded rather odd, but some of the recent reading I'd done emphasized the importance of getting the wort below 170F as quickly as possible to preserve hop aroma. Not to mention it put the whirlpool chiller I put together over the winter to good use.

The end result was awesome. Huge hop nose and a very distinct hop flavor.

Fast forward a few weeks. I found myself listening to a podcast with Stan Hieronymus in which he talked about the volatile compounds in hops. One of the more interesting nuggets of information was that ALL of the volatile aromatics are boiling off above 170f and some volatilise as low as 80f. (There is some far more complex chemistry going on here regarding the rate of volatilization and how other compounds in wort can "grab" onto the hop aromatics, but I don't really understand all of it.)

So with some additional credibility behind this lower temperature whirlpool technique, we decided to put it to the test. One of the brews we had slated for the summer was a pale ale from Brewing Classic Styles. So we tweaked the recipe a bit for this oddly timed addition and brewed two pale ales with the same malt bill but different character hops. One had Simcoe and Columbus, the other Galaxy and Pacific Gem. Both were bitterred with Horizon and each had a five minute addition, a flame-out addition whirlpooled for ten minutes, a 170F ten minute whirlpool addition and were finished with a dry hop addition.

Again - I am sure there is a lot of complicated chemistry at work, but there is absolutely something to this temperature stuff. These beers finished with massive hop aroma and flavor and definitely more so than we've gotten out of just dry hopping. I kept the Pacific batch and am really interested in brewing with both of these hop varieties again. There's a distinct melon / tropical fruit / berry / spice aroma to it

The only thing I'd go back and change is to tone down the bitterness a few IBU's. Rager calculated out in the thirties, bit that seems low for how much bitterness I pick up in the beer. If / when I re-brew I'll drop the horizon down to 14g.

Recipe(s):
5.126kg US 2 Row
340g Victory
340g Munich 10L
227g White Wheat

Mash at 152 for 60m.

27g Horizon @ 60

7g CTZ @ 5m
7g Simcoe @ 5m

7g CTZ @0m / 10m whirlpool
7g Simcoe @0m / 10m whirlpool

7g CTZ @170F / 10m whirpool
7g Simcoe @170F / 10m whirlpool

28g CTZ Dry Hop
28g Simcoe Dry Hop

(We used Galaxy and Pacific Gem in the same amounts.)

Public Service Announcement

(Lifted from Goose's Website.)

Go buy yourself a four pack of Goose Island's Matilda. And don't drink it. Seriously - do yourself a favor and sit on it for at least year.

I live in Chicago and drink a handful of Goose's beers on a semi-regular basis. I've always thought Matilda was a good offering, but never something I'd seek out. Fresh from the brewery it's a bit too sweet and my take was always that Goose was doing a crappy job of trying to produce a Belgian Golden Strong or a Tripel.

I was dead wrong. I hereby apologize to Goose Island for unfairly discrediting them on this effort. Until I really upped the ante on my knowledge of beer styles (through the BJCP and my own brewing) I was sadly unaware of the existence of 'Belgian Specialty Ale', a category created specifically to capture Orval.

As such, I just didn't get this beer. But last summer I got a few four packs and just let it sit in my basement, waiting to offload it onto some family or friends during a special occasion or a gathering at my house. During that year of aging, something magical happened. The brett introduced during barrel aging woke up and went to work. The beer dries out and gains an entirely different dimension of complexity. T distinct barnyard funk and some of the other more distinctive esters from brett become more pronounced and round the beer out.

So maybe it was just my ignorance of this style, the less evolved and less funk-friendly state of my palate, or maybe it was just the fact that I've never had the chance to try a substantially aged sample of this beer. But I was missing out. And if you've never had Matilda after some cellaring, so are you.