Home Brew Forum

19 lbs Maris Otter
2 lbs Crystal 40L
2oz Centennial FWH
2oz Centennial 20 min
2oz Centennial hop tea at flame out
Wyeast Irish Ale and S-05

Mashed for 2.5 hours (kids football games) at 154 deg.

Here's where it gets interesting:
Made a hop tea with 2 oz using a french press. Steeped hops in almost boiling water for 10 minutes and pushed the plunger down. Theory being that I'm going to boil off all the aroma oils so lets extract them first (got this idea from BYO). Added the hop tea at flame out instead of hops.
I decided to use the S-05 one one batch as I've made this recipe several times, meaning it's time to experiment.
Both batches produced extreme foam and are churning away in the carboys still after 3 days.

Interesting - let us know how the hop tea experiment turns out

Update on the hop tea:

CO2 keg - a very pronounced hop aroma and grassy bitterness. Not really what I was going for with the grass, but it doesn't linger. Perhaps use 2/3 the hops in the next tea. Verdict - might have been worth saving $8 on 2 ounces of hops

Hand pump keg - well, when I added the corn sugar for carbonating I steeped the dry hops in that liquid resulting in a mouth full of dry grass and dirt if you could imagine. Again, not awful or even bad, just not really pleasant. It should mellow as it always seems to. Verdict - don't steep the dry hops

Sounds interesting! Is that Centennial whole flowers or pellets?

My first extract batch was a Centennial IPA, I dry hopped with Centennial whole hops which gave the grassy flavour you mention.

This was the third time brewing this recipe, so time for experimentation. I had never gotten this much grassy flavor from dry hopping before. And I am using whole flowers.

I love Centennial. I use them with Amarillo a lot. After about 10 minutes in the wort chiller, I chuck in a handful of hops. This seems to give off a flavor profile similar to dry hopping.

Funny thing happened on the way to the beer engine...
During Wed. nights brew session I took the gang the pub (roughed in) and warned them about the mouthful they were about to experience. And lo' and behold after just one more day the beer had mellowed! Now it tastes very nice and was highly complemented.