Hop Additions

[Jake]

So I wanted to get a discussion going on how people utilize hops. As I've expressed in other posts, I don't really do too much research; if you tell me somethings a good thing and to do it, I'll likely do it lol.

So to this point, I've been adding hops at 3 different points. 60, 15 and 1. And from what I understand it is for bittering, flavour, and aroma.

Now my question is this: how much flavour will you get in your beer from your bittering hops? I've been doing some reading (believe it or not), and most people say that you hardly get any flavour after hops are boiled for an hour ... if this is the case, why not just use a high AA% hop for bittering like galena (described as clean bittering hop, works well with alot of other hops), and only worry about the flavour and aroma additions? May sound like a stupid question and too simple, but that's how my mind works  

[sdixon]

Jake - From what I understand, you are correct, there is very little flavor or aroma left after a 60 min boil. As far as I'm concerned, it makes little sense to use a quality low alpha acids hop for bittering when a high alpha acids hop variety would do the same thing with less volume. That said, there are likely subtle bittering qualities that emerge from different varieties. My understanding is that calculations can account for a lot IBU, but flavor and aroma are more of a "craft" decision.

[Richard]

Personal experience - bittering hops do add flavour specific to the hop, but some are "cleaner" than others. Hops such as Magnum are described as "clean bittering", meaning that they do not add very much to the flavour other than the bittering. On the other hand if you use the low-alpha hops in massive quantity to provide the same level of bittering, you will definitely notice a difference in flavour. It's far less noticeable than switching around your flavour / aroma additions between cultivars, but even at 60 minutes the different varieties are distinguishable.

[Dave Savoie]

Some seem to be more harsh bittering Ive found I like medium % bittering hops

[Dean]

so kind of like mixing Crown Royal with coke and ice cubes ...it'll work and some people may not know the difference but that's not what it's for and it's a bit of a waste?

[Dave Savoie]

We need to do a study  (jake )  Same recipe = one hop addition same IBU from EX.... 1 OZ Galena = 30 IBU VS 2 OZ of say cascade to = same 30 IBU and see if there is a difference

[Jake]

Dean I think you get it better than the rest

[Jake]

Yea I may do a second winter warmer, but use a small amount (maybe .5 or .75oz) of galena for the bittering, instead of the 2oz of willamette. It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference it'll make.

I'll do it assuming I like this batch. I don't want to try to do a variation of a shitty beer.