Hop Aroma

[albino]

I'm struggling to get a big hop aroma when trying to brew American Style IPAs. I've read up quite a bit about hop-bursting, late additions and dry hopping but I just can't seem to get that big aroma. The beer itself tastes "fine" but isn't what I'm looking for. I've pasted my latest attempt which is a clone of Lagunitas IPA but with an increased amount of dry hops - 23l batch -. As I said, beer tastes fine but, when tasted side-by-side with the real thing, is missing that juiciness and hop aroma. Can anyone give any pointers? Thanks

5.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 2 83.1 %
0.39 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 6.6 %
0.37 kg Munich Malt - 10L (19.7 EBC) Grain 4 6.2 %
0.25 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (59.1 EBC) Grain 5 4.2 %
10.00 g Magnum [10.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 9.5 IBUs
10.00 g Willamette [6.90 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 6.4 IBUs
4.00 g Summit [17.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 6.5 IBUs
30.00 g Centennial [9.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 9 19.3 IBUs
23.00 g willamette [6.90 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 10 10.5 IBUs
1.22 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining
55.00 g Cascade [8.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 min Hop 12 0.0 IBUs (@ 77c for 20 mins)
75.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days Hop 13 0.0 IBUs (Pellets added after fermentation complete in stainless steel dry hopper removed after 3 days @ 19c)
75.00 g Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days Hop 14 0.0 IBUs (Pellets added directly for 3 days @19c then cool crashed at 4c for 2 days beofre racking to keg).

[Sadfield]

What yeast and fermentation temperature? I think you should be getting good amount of aroma from +6g/L dry-hopping.

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[albino]

I used 2 packets of dried Safale S-05. Fermented at 19c for 4 days, increasing to 20c for diacetyl rest.

[Sadfield]

Maybe move the Willamette/Centennial nearer to the end of the boil. S05 is very clean though, and as I can't see much wrong with the recipe and your hopping rates, I'm wondering if Lagunitas use a more expressive yeast, and you are missing some fruity yeast esters that underpin the hop aromas. You could try WY1272/WLP051 at a higher temp (21c) which is the Anchor Liberty Ale strain, this is fruity but retains hop character. Mangrove Jacks Liberty Ale could also be this strain in dry form, and may be worth trying.

Lagunitas could also get the pick of the freshest hops.

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EDIT: At home and looking through Craft Brew by Euan Ferguson, and the recipe from Lagunitas for Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale recommends WLP002 English Ale for this hoppy american wheat, so possibly they use a house yeast of British origin.

[Bazz]

When ever i do hop bomb apa's and ipa's i never put any hops in before 20 minutes, still boil for 60 minutes but the first bittering editions go in at 20 minutes and then at 5 minute intervals until the end. I then hold off with the flame out hops until i've chilled the wort to 80degC then leave to stand for 30 minutes before finishing the chilling. Dry hopping i then do as normal at 4-6g per litre. There was a thread on here a while back about dropping the temperature after fermentation has completed to 14 degC to dry hop at, with apparently good results so i may try that next as well.

[Matt in Birdham]

There's a lot about on the web about maximising hop aroma if you look for it. A couple of points I would make:

1/ How do your hops smell in the bag? Fresh, well stored hops can be vastly more aromatic than old hops, or hops that have been badly sealed/stored warm. I've noticed huge differences depending on where I've ordered from. The best hops seem to fill the room with smell just on opening the bag. If your hops aren't that aromatic to start with, then nothing in the process is going to change that.

2/ How careful are you with O2 pickup on the cold side? This is the biggest enemy of hop aroma, so practice O2 minimisation as far as possible (e.g. no secondary, purge keg etc). I have now taken to dry-hopping with a few points of gravity left, in the hope that active yeast will deal with any introduced oxygen, and CO2 is still being produced which should flush O2 from the FV headspace (FWIW, this is what Sierra Nevada do, amongst others, for the same reason, and they get great hop character in their beers).

3/ I'd ditch the stainless steel hop container, and just dry-hop the whole lot at once. Multi-stage dry-hopping doesn't offer much to the home brewer (although YMMV) - it is primarily done by the commercials because of limited surface area at the bottom of conicals.

[bellebouche]

lots of good advice so far, I'd stand behind all of it.

Couple of observations.

Mid-boil additions...

30.00 g Centennial [9.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 9 19.3 IBUs
23.00 g willamette [6.90 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 10 10.5 IBUs

I find I've used them less and less over the years. if you're doing hop-stands and large whirlpool additions the finesse of these will be lost. Toss 'em and add to your dryhop regime.
I do rack to secondary for my DH additions but I flush the vessel containing all my DH charge first and then transfer after the krausen has dropped but there is still a lot of yeast in suspension - this scavenges oxygen really well. Depending on the yeast type there's some biotransformation at play.
Hop contact area. I only use filtration at the point of xfer - using a stainless dry hopper in a FV is minimising hop contact area.
Hop contact time. My DH additions never get saturated at three days... often 5-6. When the hops start to drop and sink to the bottom then I rack into a keg
Minimise cold side O2 uptake during packaging. I drop straight from the FV into a flushed keg via the beer out line.
Are all of your hops pellets? It's varietal dependent but some of the heat generated in pellet processing is deleterious to some of the volatile hop aromatics.

[scuppeteer]

Looking at your schedule there's just not enough late hops.

My last APA was similar in strength. I'm guessing around 6% for a Lagunitas clone. But overall I used 210g of hops relative to your brew length.

As such.
10g FWH
50g @ 10 mins
120g @ 1min.
Dry hop on chill for 2 days @ 3g/l
IBU's in the mid 50s.

I only use leaf in the copper and pellet for dry hopping. Contact with the beer is key and while these hoppers are great for keeping it all together and removing them if you only want a certain time in contact, I do question their actual viability for spreading the goodness around.

I must say it was the best APA I've brewed and the aroma just climbed out of the glass. I used BRY-97 yeast which I find far better for a west coast style.

[alexlark]

What Scuppeteer said. I've gone for pellets every time for this reason, and always loose in the boil and FV.

[Matt in Birdham]

Looking at your schedule there's just not enough late hops.

Late hops are all well and good (and I agree pretty much with your schedule), but if you are not getting a very significant aroma with 150g of DH in 20l then something is wrong somewhere! That's double the (alleged) rate in Heady Topper(!)

[alexlark]

Take some inspiration from the Hardcore IPA hop schedule in DIY Dog. Now that's a beer. I based my DIPA on that recipie. Circa. 100IBU. I'm gonna push that a bit further for the next batch. This is without a doubt the best beer I have done to date.

[Jocky]

Looking at your schedule there's just not enough late hops.

Late hops are all well and good (and I agree pretty much with your schedule), but if you are not getting a very significant aroma with 150g of DH in 20l then something is wrong somewhere! That's double the (alleged) rate in Heady Topper(!)

I would be surprised if any acclaimed IPA uses less than 5g per litre dry hop.

The best clone I've seen for Heady Topper uses nearly 10g per litre.

My advice would be:

- Use pellets if you're not already. Leaf just doesn't disperse apart enough.
- Use the freshest pellets you can. Already open/kept in plastic bags or old hops that haven't been stored freezing in mylar bags are not good enough.
- Use the best and fruitless hops. Citra, Mosaic etc. I've found Ahtanum to be a cheap but really good dry hop. Motueka and Rakau are other good alternatives. Cascade doesn't really cut it for me.
- Do everything you can to keep oxygen out when fermentation starts to slow. If you can, finish fermentation and do your dry hopping in a keg.



If all else fails, cheat a bit: http://themaltmiller.co.uk/index.php?_a ... uctId=1567

[Matt in Birdham]

I would be surprised if any acclaimed IPA uses less than 5g per litre dry hop.

The best clone I've seen for Heady Topper uses nearly 10g per litre.

They are rumoured to only use ~4g per litre, but they also have one of the tightest O2 regimes in the industry (hot and cold side) and apparently dry hop under pressure. I have had the pleasure of a very fresh can of it once and I agree it doesn't taste that little so if they are achieving it through their process then they are doing something right..

I don't know how much credence I would give this chart, but it suggests that many known IPAs are coming in under 5g per litre (it has HT @ ~6g/l).

[guypettigrew]

I would be surprised if any acclaimed IPA uses less than 5g per litre dry hop.

The best clone I've seen for Heady Topper uses nearly 10g per litre.

Good grief. That would mean 220g of dry hops in my usual 22 litre brew. Surely not?

Guy

[albino]

Thanks for all the info and advice provided. It’s an interesting one seeing as I have pretty much stuck to the recipe as given by Lagunitas head brewer Jeremy Marshal on the Jamil show (although I have increased the dry hopping from 21g each of Centennial and Cascade. I did this as I often find my IPAs lacking in aroma). As I said in the original post, I have read a lot about maximising aroma and have experimented with these suggestions, but I just still seem to be getting something wrong somewhere.

Some of the advice above has made me think about some potential issues and whether it could be down to one or a mixture of them.

Freshness of hops – Hops were all pellet and bought from the Malt Miller who have a great reputation. I used them within a couple of days of receiving them. The dry hop pellets were all from freshly opened packets weighed out specifically for dry hopping so there shouldn’t be any issues with this. I suppose that, as Sadfield mentioned, the big brewers get the pick of the hops so it could be related.

AA% – Clearly Centennial and Cascade aren’t the biggest AA hops but I was trying to stay true to the original. Next time it might be worth swapping out for similar hops with a higher AA percentage although I didn’t want to veer too much from the original.

Length of dry-hopping – I normally do 5 days dry-hopping and chuck it all in at once to the FV after fermentation. Usually with better results than the recipe suggested – 3 days remove – 3 days remove. The idea with removing after 3 days is to reduce the chances of any grassy/vegetal flavours which is something I have experienced in the past (something I read somewhere – I guess I’ll go back to 5 days all in!)

Temperature of dry-hopping – Again this was based on some research that fermenting temps were best for this however, lower temperatures are definitely something to experiment with.

Late Hop Additions - These additions are relatively small compared to some more modern IPAs, if they manage to do it at Lagunitas with this recipe, I’d have thought it wouldn’t have impacted too much.

Yeast – This is definitely something I want to explore as I have always stuck to S05 for IPAs and, as I mentioned before, am always underwhelmed by the aroma. Next up will be one of these then - WY1272/WLP051/BRY-97.

Thanks again for the input – I’ve gone for the cheating a bit option and dropped in some of that Malt Miller hops oil. Let’s see how it goes! Any other ideas welcomed! Cheers!