High Alpha Hops

[banjokat]

Hi all, apologies if this has been done before.
I've previously used Magnum as a boil hop but the beers didn't seem to age very well (not that they often get the chance!). Then recently, I reread the book by the wonderfully monikered Randy Mosher, and he advises against using super high alpha hops at a home brew level. Reasoning being that you're using so few hops you don't get enough of the oils in there. Seems plausible to me, especially after my Magnum experiences. Anyone else found that?

[Jim]

Well, I've not heard that before. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I understood it was the alpha acid in the main that acted as a preservative and that will be the same as if you used a larger quantity of low alpha hops.

However there's more to hops than alpha acid, and maybe the oils contribute to the longevity of the flavour, and that's what he's getting at?

[oakwell]

I've used magnum and other high alpha hops for bittering on several occasions and haven't had any issues. maybe using larger quantities of later hops compensates?

[Jocky]

First of all, Randy Mosher's book Radical Brewing is a superb book, although for one thing you have to remember that the book was first published 10 years ago, when all round big hitter hops like Citra didn't exist. I don't think Amarillo existed on a commercial scale either then, although both may have been added in later editions of the book.

But I have been wondering the same thing and was going to post an identical thread.

Looking at current recipes by many people Magnum certainly seems to be a favourite as a bittering hop in many American Pale Ales as it is 'clean'. Equally I've found I don't really like some hops like Citra as a replacement in the long boil, so I was wondering about instead taking one of my recipes and replacing the Magnum bittering addition with lots more flavour/aroma hops at 15 minutes.

Having accidentally ended up with an over abundance of Citra I'm going to test this idea. I'm going to brew Seymour's Citra Gold with Magnum bittering and Citra late, and then I'm going to do another version a week later with more Citra and no bittering hops.

[Belter]

I'd follow Moshers recipes and leave his brewing advice well alone. I read that book and thought the majority of his advice wrong. I.e. "You can never have too much yeast".

Magnum are used worldwide and I've never heard anything like that.

I'm not saying he's entirely wrong but I don't believe it. I think we'd have heard more about it

[banjokat]

Agreed. I always thought Magnum was one of the cleanest bittering hops available. My brews that seemed odd certainly didn't contain lashings of late hops but there are countless other things that could have caused the perceived level of staleness, if that's the word - I'm certainly no beer judge. Just reading his book got me thinking. I must have missed his yeast comments, that's completely wrong as we all know.

[Jocky]

His comments about hops were certainly written 10+ years ago, and formed in the years before that when the home brewing landscape was quite different. His experience at that time would have been that Cascade was the king of aroma, but at 7-8%AA not as cost effective to provide the bittering for a big IPA.

[crimsongarlic]

Then recently, I reread the book by the wonderfully monikered Randy Mosher, and he advises against using super high alpha hops at a home brew level. Reasoning being that you're using so few hops you don't get enough of the oils in there.

Surely if you brew a recipe at home to 5 gallons and then brew the same recipe upscaled to 10bbl then you're simply going to upscale the hops. Why then would you have less hop oil in the homebrew version?

Don't you get better hop utilisation on larger systems too and therefore need to use fewer hops?

[Jocky]

Then recently, I reread the book by the wonderfully monikered Randy Mosher, and he advises against using super high alpha hops at a home brew level. Reasoning being that you're using so few hops you don't get enough of the oils in there.

Surely if you brew a recipe at home to 5 gallons and then brew the same recipe upscaled to 10bbl then you're simply going to upscale the hops. Why then would you have less hop oil in the homebrew version?

Don't you get better hop utilisation on larger systems too and therefore need to use fewer hops?

His point is about creating your own recipe. He says that high alpha hops are there to save money for breweries, but using more of the lower alpha hops is better, albeit more expensive.

[scuppeteer]

Never found them to be a problem, but they can be harsher I find, so if I do use one for bittering I usually FWH seems to do the trick for me anyway.

[TC2642]

I have a regular recipe where I use 100gms of Magnum for bittering and 50gms Citra at 15mins and another 50gms at knock out, tastes rather good to me.

[Clibit]

Mosher simply says he prefers to use lower alpha hops with better aroma for bittering as they are less harsh than the high alpha hops which have been developed for extraction purposes for large scale brewing. I just read the section again. He says he uses high alpha hops as aroma hops sometimes in IPAs, and that the high alpha varieties are getting better as new varieties are released. It was written pre Citra, Simcoe etc

[Rookie]

Don't you get better hop utilisation on larger systems too and therefore need to use fewer hops?

I've read that several times.

[far9410]

I would think there has to be something in this, hops must have more than just alpha, or why late/ dry hop?