'Hop bursting' cascade SMaSH

[Parky]

Being a big fan of Thornbridge's Jaipur IPA, I wanted to give 'hop bursting' a try as a technique for getting that really juicy citrus flavour and aroma from late hop additions. 'Hop bursting' is the practice of adding a large amount of late hops to provide the majority (if not all) of the IBUs (bitterness), instead of deriving the bitterness from hops at the beginning of the boil.

I chose a simple cascade / pale malt SMaSH recipe, as I wanted to taste the full effect of this technique, with a minimal malt flavour.


Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L):           5.0
Total Grain (kg):         1.000
Total Hops (g):           35.25
Original Gravity (OG):    1.043  (°P): 10.7
Final Gravity (FG):       1.011  (°P): 2.8
Alcohol by Volume (ABV):  4.22 %
Colour (SRM):             3.4   (EBC): 6.7
Bitterness (IBU):         34.0   (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes):      70

Grain Bill
----------------
1.000 kg Pale Malt (100%)

Hop Bill
----------------
1.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 70 Minutes (Boil) (0.2 g/L) [4.72 IBU]
5.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil) (1 g/L) [8,26 IBU]
6.3 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (1.3 g/L) [7.88 IBU]
9.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil) (1.8 g/L) [7.71 IBU]
9.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 2 Minutes (Boil) (1.8 g/L) [5.39 IBU]
5.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 17 Days (Dry Hop) (1 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------
2.0 g Whirlfloc Tablet @ 10 Minutes (Boil)
0.1 g Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Minutes (Boil)
30 g cane sugar for batch priming bottles at 2.4 volumes.

Single step Infusion at 152°F (66.5°C) for 60 Minutes
Mashout at 168°F (75.5°C) for 10 Minutes
Fermented at 64°F (17.8°C) with Safale US-05 for 21 days

Walkthrough

1. Heated 3.5 L of water in stock pot to 157 °F (69 °C), stirred in crushed grains to avoid clumps forming.
2. Mashed at 152 °F (66.5 °C) in preheated oven, on it's lowest setting, for 60 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.
3. Added boiled water to raise temperature to 168°F (75.5°C) and kept in oven for an additional 10 minutes (mashout).
4. Drained wort from grain and sparged grain with 3.5 L of water at 168°F (75.5°C) for 15 minutes.
5. Collected wort in boil kettle and boiled for 70 minutes, adding hops according to schedule above.
6. Added Whirlfloc and yeast nutrient with 10 minutes left in boil.
7. At flameout cooled wort in ice bath in sink until temp. reached 19°C
8. Transferred wort to fermentation vessel and aerated by shaking vessel for 5 minutes.
9. Added yeast rehydrated in 100mls of water at 95°F (35°C) to fermenter and mixed.
10. Installed bung and blow off tube on fermenter and fermented at 64°F (17.8°C).

Additional Notes:

1. Used hop pellets and had some issues straining the wort into the fermentation vessel with the amount of hop matter in the end of boil kettle. May try adding hops in hop bags with this method in future.
2. Need to increase volume in boil kettle to account for losses due to large number of hops.
3. Target size of batch was 5L, although actual yield was 4.6L due to hop matter at end of fermenter. Will set 5.5L as target size when trying this technique again.

Articles of interest

BYO Magazine - Hop bursting and what to expect from this technique
https://byo.com/hops/item/2519-what-is-hopbursting-and-what-can-i-expect-from-this-technique

Mr Malty - Tips on adding late additions
http://www.mrmalty.com/late_hopping.php

Home brew stack exchange - Calculating bitterness in hop bursting
http://homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/5063/hop-burst-technique-bitterness-calculation

Brew dudes - Explanation of hop bursting, with video
http://www.brew-dudes.com/hop-bursting/5858

Beer blog - Advantages and disadvantages of hop bursting, three recipes to try
http://barleypopmaker.info/2010/01/01/hopbursting-3-homebrew-recipes-using-this-method/

[Parky]

[UPDATE: 25 February, 2015]

I had intended to dry hop this beer to provide additional hop freshness, but came across a method of adding hop extract to the beer at bottling time which seemed to more appropriate to the lighter flavour of this SMaSH recipe.

I've posted a follow up 'how to' outlining the method here - http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,9024.0.html

[Will]

Hi Parky, have you bottled this yet?

[Parky]

have you bottled this yet?

Hi Will, yes indeed, it's been conditioning in bottles for 3 weeks now. I'm pleased with the way this turned out, not much body or taste from the malt, but was aiming to keep the malt on the low side to bring out the flavour and aroma of the hops. Lovely juicy fragrance and taste, and would make a good session beer, especially for the summer time. I brought it along to the last Capital brewers meet and some of the folks there seemed to enjoy it (see end of topic page here - http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,8934.15.html ). There were some who had brewed a cascade SMaSH before and hadn't been impressed, but the late additions seemed to make a huge difference to the overall profile of the hops, and the comments were positive.

I think this method is best suited to American hops (anything with a citrus flavour), as I tried the same hop schedule with Fuggles and Maris Otter, and the result , although it was sweet, wasn't as 'juicy' as the big burst of citrus from cascade.

I'll be revisiting this hopping schedule with a few tweaks in three weeks for another SMaSH using centennial, and will see how it compares. I'm looking for a similar 'hop burst' to Thornbridge's Jaipur, and have read that 70% of their hop additions come post-boil, so will be moving a lot of the hopping to later in the schedule to try to emulate that.