PeteH wrote:What do you do hop wise SP?
I tend to do a mixture of a short boil and steeping. I don't dry hop as I'm not keen on the 'green' hop flavour it adds, but I would recommend at least giving it a try as many like it.
It's not at exact science, but the idea behind it is that the process of kit manufacture tends to keep the desired level of bitterness, but loses some hop flavour and somewhat more of the hop aroma. If you were AG brewing, you would add hops for flavour towards the end of the boil, say 20 minutes before the end of the boil, and a further batch of hops aroma after turning off the boiler.
To try to emulate this, my usual method is to boil a small amount of hops (for flavour) in some wort for 10-20 minutes, turn off the heat, add further hops (for aroma) and leave to steep for 20-30 mins. To get some worty liquor, empty the kit can into the fermenter as usual, then fill the can with boiling water and stir to dissolve the residue. Empty into a large pan, and repeat so you have two can fulls. Add the hops and boil as above, steep the second lot, then strain the liquor into the fermenter using a sanitised sieve. I generally use twice as many hops for the steeping as I do for the boil, and careful choice of hops to suit the style of beer can enhance a kit beer very much.
Another method is to make a 'hop tea', that's simply steeping the hops in boiled water for 20 minutes of so before adding the liquor to the fermenter. Cafetieres are ideal for this as they will strain the liquor for you. This is great for adding aroma, and is the ideal method if the wort is already in the fermenter, but for some reason steeping in water doesn't work as well as using wort.
I quite like lager hops to flavour a pale ale, but any English aroma hops will do the job too. You could try a hop tea made from 20g of Fuggles, or something like that, best not to overdo it whilst experimenting.
