National Homebrew Club Ireland

Hi fellas,

I am fairly new to the home brew scene and have started out all grain from the get go.

I have about 13 brews under by belt since November and have been making small batch, about 15L at a go to nail down some recipes. I can see over time that as I refine my processes the beer is definitely getting better especially since sorting a temperature controlled fermentation fridge and moving to liquid yeast with stir plate in January.

Now, my question...

I'm a hop head but cant seem to brew a beer hoppy enough, apart from my last single hop brew ( Amarillo ) which was good and got great reviews on Untappd. It contained 150g of hops mostly added at flame out and dry hopped.

I have compared my recipes to quite a few online and even if I double the hop quantities I still dont seem to get the "fruitness"or "grapefruit" hop profiles I was hoping for. That said the beer is still good, but not fantastic. The hops are as fresh as I can get them, 2015 crops generally and are stored in a air tight pouch in the freezer.

For a laugh last weekend I did another brew and have added 10g Falconers Flight 7Cs at 30 mins, 100g of Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe ( 30g each at 5 mins and 70g each hop stand at 90c for 20 mins. ). Checking in on it yesterday the fridge smells divine but should I really have to add this much hops to get a hoppy beer? Especially at €8 per 100g of hops!

I can get the bittering and aroma to play nice but the flavour seems more difficult to achieve.

Am I missing summat stupid here or are my processes for hop additions all wrong?  I can post a recipe if needs be...

Any suggestions would be welcome!

Jon

What's your 60min addition?
Have you a Dry Hopping Schedule?

it can range from 25g to 70g from 7 days in secondary for 7 days, then bottle for most brews that I decide to do it on

One brew had over 150g and was good but not great....

Where are you based? It could be your water.

Im in south Dublin but am using bottled water from Dunnes ( it's pH 7.7 I think ) but am also using a pH stabilizer ( 5.2 stabilizer ) for mash and sparge...

All beers are a balance of various Malts and hops, if you are looking for a Pliny clone you need to "load it" with the appropriate hops that complement each ether.
Go to a meet and get recipes of guys hoppy beers you like or pull one off the award winning recipes section on the forum.
Any other details about the water on the bottle?
Eitherways keep trying, I had three attempts to get my Pliny clone where I wanted it, 40quids worth of hops each time!

Like cider head says, you've got some pretty handy brewers around that area. Meet up and they might be able to advise you or share their water report with you.
I think your water might just need a bit of tweaking to turn a good beer into a great beer.

All drinking water is around PH 7.5 as if it was lower or higher you would not drink it. The reason you want a lower PH is for mashing the grains as the enzymes prefer this level but you need to focus more on what salts are in your water to understand its effects. ;) 

The late additions and dry hopping sound ok. As the others have mentioned, water chemistry will make a difference. Unfortunately, even bottled water in Ireland contains a high amounts of bicarbonate which will contribute to a higher mash pH and a more muted hop flavour. Gypsum is your biggest ally when fighting this.

Have a look at this guide. The best hoppy beer I've brewed was based on this guide and I swear by it now. http://www.brewunited.com/index.php?blogid=91

Thanks for that....

Ok, so where do I get gypsum and is there some formula that I can use to add it?

Software like beersmith will work it all out for you. Unfortunately you will need to know your water chemistry. 

You can buy gypsum from any of the homebrew stores. It's relatively cheap and you'll only be usng a couple of grams at a time.

The best calculator I've found for working out mineral additions for water is Bru'n water - https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/

There's a bit of a learning curve on it but once you figure it out, it's brilliant. The mineral and acid additions have always been very accurate for me, I barely use my pH meter anymore as I trust what the spreadsheet is giving me. I've attached an example of the spreadsheet filled out for one of my own beers.

If you need a hand with it, I can try to help you out and I'm sure a lot of the lads here would know even more than me again.

Brilliant! Thanks...

On first glance it looks like I'll need a hand alright. I'll mull over it and see if I can make sense of it..

Quote from: nigel_c on June 15, 2016, 12:00:08 PM
Software like beersmith will work it all out for you. Unfortunately you will need to know your water chemistry.

That's the handy thing about using bottled water. Your mineral content is on the bottle!

well I do use Beesmith and obviously bottled water...so will look at that

Unless I've missed something above, I think the biggest thing you seem to be missing is a 15min hop addition.

You are fortunate that the best AIPA brewer in the country is in SCD and I'd got to one of their meets, hold Bubbles down and beat it out of him with a big stick. He uses tap water.

Quote from: CH on June 15, 2016, 12:42:51 PM
You are fortunate that the best AIPA brewer in the country is in SCD and I'd got to one of their meets, hold Bubbles down and beat it out of him with a big stick. He uses tap water.

Has he gotten that tap water tested before? I'd love to use tap water but it's just too hard where I live  :(

Where are you living? sorry Kilkenny, soft water not hard is a problem from hoppy bears.
I had some analysis done on my own last year and its soft, its amazing the difference a few grams can make.

Quote from: CH on June 15, 2016, 01:03:14 PM
Where are you living? sorry Kilkenny, soft water not hard is a problem from hoppy bears.
I had some analysis done on my own last year and its soft, its amazing the difference a few grams can make.

I actually mean that my water is too alkaline as opposed to hard. The alkalinity makes it tough for me to hit a decent mash pH so now I use Aldi bottled water with 252 ppm HCO3 along with lactic acid. Compare that to your lovely 53ppm HCO3!

Where did you get your water tested? I'd like to get this done if it's reasonable.

I did a group buy for members last year.
I sent a crate of 24 bottles off to the UK to a guy that used to sell analysis machines for a living, I'm trying to remember it was about €25-30, its in the group buy section there somewhere if you want to have a look.
I might do another one later this year when its reflective of average weather conditions and balanced water supplies so not floods or empty wells.

Quote from: CH on June 15, 2016, 01:54:40 PM
I might do another one later this year when its reflective of average weather conditions and balanced water supplies so not floods or empty wells.

Nice one. I'd get in on that.

Might be an idea to post a recipe of a beer you thought would be hoppy but you felt lacking, along with how the fermentation preformed and also what you were missing in the final result.

For a lot of flavour, I've found a mix of a decent hop steep (say 100g) and a good dry hop (again at least 100g) gives oodles of flavour. However others load all the additions into 10, 5 and 0 and get similar results.

A couple of suggestions:

- Try hop varieties that are higher in myrcene. Myrcene is a big part of aroma-forward floral and citrus flavors. Simcoe and Mosaic are good with 40-50% myrcene of total oil content, but it's not up to the levels of something like Mandarina Bavaria, which can be 70+%.
- Use a second hot stand addition. Myrcene volatilizes above 65C so you're losing some flavor with a flameout addition. I've read some brewers getting those super-juicy IPAs by adding a second round of hops after the wort has cooled a bit.
- Add more hops! BrewDog's published recipe for Punk IPA uses 320g of hops for a 20L batch, which scales to 240g for your 15L volume -  or about 2/3rds again more hops than you said you were using.

Hope this helps.

I was having the same issue with flavor. I made a change to my 0mins addition. I increased the amount of hops I add. I also extended the stand time I leave the hops in contact with the wort (from 15 mins to 30 mins), and started to cool the wort as soon as I add them. I only drop the temp to 77, which is at the top of the sub-isomerisation range (71°C–77°C). I keep stirring every 5 mins or so to release the flavours. By the time the 30mins is up the temp has dropped to 72 or so. This has improved my flavor no end! Hope this helps.

In my experience you need at least 100g of hops (but more like 150) to get a decently hoppy beer. I wouldn't waste 300g+ of hops unless I was making a DIPA. The biggest bang for you buck will be dry hopping with 50g+.

I'd also recommend taking a look at the newer hops. As they're not as widely used they tend to be quite a bit cheaper than the more popular ones (Galaxy, you delicious expensive bastard!)

Pliny clone V1 I did 2 years ago, no water treatment! 3 x DH


Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
3.73 kg               Pale Malt (2 Row) US (3.9 EBC)           Grain         1        74.1 %       
0.44 kg               Caramel Malt - 60L (Briess) (118.2 EBC)  Grain         2        8.7 %         
0.44 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)    Grain         3        8.7 %         
0.41 kg               Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC)             Grain         4        8.2 %         
0.02 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (39.4 EBC)    Grain         5        0.3 %         
16.55 g               Columbus (Tomahawk) [15.50 %] - Boil 90. Hop           6        27.2 IBUs     
4.41 g                Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min         Hop           7        6.2 IBUs     
4.41 g                Columbus (Tomahawk) [15.50 %] - Boil 45. Hop           8        6.2 IBUs     
4.41 g                Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min         Hop           9        4.8 IBUs     
1.00 Items            Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)        Fining        10       -             
85.00 g               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min          Hop           11       0.0 IBUs     
28.00 g               Centennial [9.90 %] - Boil 0.0 min       Hop           12       0.0 IBUs     
1.0 pkg               US West Coast Yeast (Mangrove Jack's #M4 Yeast         13       -             
28.00 g               Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop           14       0.0 IBUs     
28.00 g               Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Dry Hop  Hop           15       0.0 IBUs     
25.00 g               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days     Hop           16       0.0 IBUs     
28.00 g               Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 4.0 Days  Hop           17       0.0 IBUs     
28.00 g               Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Dry Hop  Hop           18       0.0 IBUs     
25.00 g               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 4.0 Days      Hop           19       0.0 IBUs     
9.00 g                Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days  Hop           20       0.0 IBUs     
9.00 g                Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Dry Hop  Hop           21       0.0 IBUs     
8.50 g                Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days      Hop


The DH process was like hobnobs in your tea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwAYglwe3HU 

This is the actual Pliny recipe. http://www.bertusbrewery.com/2015/10/pliny-elder-40.html. Apparently comes from a source close to RRB.

Loaded with early hop extract additions.

Yeah but it's not as good
I've had 4 bottles in my life of Pliny and turned down 2 last Easter to let somebody else have a try, yeah it's a good beer but the whole Christmas toy hype thing irks me, plenty of other good commercial beers out there.

Quote from: CH on June 15, 2016, 08:01:40 PM
Yeah but it's not as good
I've had 4 bottles in my life of Pliny and turned down 2 last Easter to let somebody else have a try, yeah it's a good beer but the whole Christmas toy hype thing irks me, plenty of other good commercial beers out there.

What could it be compared to over here? I'll likely never get a chance to try the real thing.

Hmm not sure anybody really here spends that amount of money on a commercial beer based on US hops that is well balanced recipe or uses Dextrose either!
Actually Whiplash had a good go with surrender the void and that was pretty special but not same hops! It used Citra.
Francis banging is probably another related one as well, who use Simcoe Columbus but Mosaic.

The closest thing ive tasted to pliny over here is Brewdog - Jackhammer. Not far off it, probably closer to sculpin though. 

I notice you said you use Ph5.2. Give a search for that on Homebrewtalk. The concensus is that it's a waste of money, doesn't do much if anything.  Like CH said I'd have a look into getting your water tested etc and using things like gypsum etc to make changes.

I've seen that stuff and was tempted but measured a couple of mashs with strips and a probe and all was in order so never bothered after that.

Hi fellas,

thanks for all the replies, definitely given me loads to think about.

As I said I have a brew fermenting where I've changed the addition times and quantities so am hoping that this will prove my process. was right and timings are of. I can then work on the quantities afterwards.

Will let you know how that one tastes...

Jon