hops hops hops hops hops

November 13, 2009 8:29 PM

I'm looking for some great homebrew beer recipes.

I looking for some new homebrew beer recipes! I realize there are a million little brew shops out there selling a million different kits, and I'd love to hear your local brewshop favorites. Here's one of my recent favorites (opt for the Wyeast). I'm not set up for full mash, but anything else is game.

I'm particularly looking for very hoppy IPAs. IBU's around 100 or so. I'm really looking for recipes or clones for beers like Hop Stoopid, Dogfish Head 90, Green Flash, Ruination etc. I understand many of these brews use hop extracts to reach these IBU levels, but I have no idea how to use extracts like that.

Recipes and guidance would be much appreciated.

posted by sanka to food & drink (12 comments total)

I imagine you're also going for a strong hop aroma and not just bitterness, right? You could consider dry-hopping, or wet-hopping if the hops are in season, in secondary. You could also construct a hopback.

I am a bigger fan of malt bombs. I had great results adding 1/4 cup of blackstrap molasses, cracked coffee beans, and cocoa powder to the boil when I had a porter extract kit.
posted by mkb at 9:09 PM on November 13, 2009

The highly hopped beers may or may not use extracts; a lot don't, as far as I know. What they do have is very good control over their boil temperature and the concentration of the wort as they do their bittering hop additions. Doing a 2-3 gallon boil for a 5 gallon batch when you put all the malt in at the beginning will lower your hop extraction. When I get back around to brewing again, I'm probably going to try the drink-cooler method for mashing a 2.5-3 gallon batch for all grain.

I had pretty good luck with a technique know as late malt addition, where you add only enough malt extract (liquid or dry) to get your wort boil to the proper sugar/enzyme levels to get the hop acids in the wort. It also helps minimize carmalization of the wort, and is pretty easy. You then add the remainder of the malt in the last 5 or minutes of the boil, just enough to fully dissolve and sanitize the late addition.

The recipe I used was, more or less, a slightly amberish beer with a bunch of the hops they had :).

Basically, 3 qts of water held at 160 degrees for 45 minutes, then a crushed grain bag of about 1.5 lb of grains (1 lb crystal, 6oz victory, 1oz chocolate malt). So, a bit darker than what you're looking for.

Sparge with 1.5 qts of 170 degree water. For extract, I then added to that water 2.5lb DME at the beginning of the boil.

Then .5 lb DME at 14 minutes, 3lb DME at 13 minutes, and 3.3lb LME at 4 minutes.

Hop schedule:

2 oz Columbus 12.2% pellets @ 60 min
.8 oz Amarillo 8.0% @ 30 min
.2 oz Amarillo " " " @ 27 min
1 oz Amarillo " " " @ 15 min
1 oz Centennial 9.1% @ 5 min

Pitched with safele US-05 after topping off with enough water to make 5 gallons.

The OG was ~1.0775. Racked to secondary, dry hopped with 1 oz centennial whole hops and 1 oz of oak chips I baked for 10 minutes. Gravity was 1.019. So, about 7.7% ABV. And bottled with priming sugar.

Hm, anyway, it tasted pretty good after a few weeks in the bottle. Pretty hoppy, probably similar to beers that advertise themselves as the 80-90 IBU, but if you ad a bit more high gravity hop pellets at the beginning of the boil you might get it. Also, if memory serves me, I didn't keep the boil up up hot enough for the whole time, which can limit hop extraction rates.

I know my recipe above probably isn't exactly what you want, but it turned out decent so it might be a starting point. You could try cutting down to two different hops if you want a simpler profile, or only use high alpha acid ones if you want real bitterness and less hop flavor (like maybe cut out an oz if you use all 10%+). Good luck and have fun!
posted by skynxnex at 9:12 PM on November 13, 2009 [2 favorites]

Good info skynex, but a bit above my board. I mean I understand what you're saying, but I'm not a grain brewer like that. I may well be if thats what it takes, but you made that clear. I don't ever want to discount that recipe, because it sounds great.

I'd also like to add an addendum to the above question about what hops or hop extracts one would use to achieve such a high IBU, but drinkable brew. Something like a Hop Stoopid or Dogfish Head 90 has. Smooth and not overly bitter, even though the IBU is way up there. What are the majority hops there? Much more citrusy than piney.
posted by sanka at 10:02 PM on November 13, 2009

The Cats Meow 3 is a good place to start looking for recipes. But here's something I found when I was starting to brew. Unlike most recipe sites, beer sites don't have very much feedback from people who've tried the brew. I think this is because even people who create and build great beers love to tinker with the formula over time. Honestly, unless you have a really amazing set up, there are going to be dozens of variables that will keep you from brewing the same beer twice. Don't despair! This is just part of brewing. First, you make something you like, so you add more of ingredient x in the next batch, then you add too much in the third, then you add not enough in a fourth brewing. You may not care for formula 3 or 4, but your best friend might love batch 4 so much he wants you to brew it at his wedding. (this happened to me)

My point being, most, if not all beer recipes are guidelines rather than rules. I STRONGLY recommend studying all the different varieties of hops, malt and yeast to get a better feel for what's out there and what you can do with the different combinations.

What's more, the more comfortable you get with all the different ingredients the better you can dissect beers while you are drinking them. There are a few different kinds of hops that I can now identify just by smelling the beer.

Finally, the best of all of this free-styling is you get to feel like a real brewmaster, smelling different grain at the brew shop, looking for something that will work best for what you're making.

Best of luck. Honestly, you can't really mess up that badly if you keep things sterile. Just play mad scientist and have fun. RDWHAHB.
posted by JimmyJames at 3:38 AM on November 14, 2009

Oh, and if you want that Nor Cal citrus hop flavor, it's got to be Cascade.
posted by JimmyJames at 3:38 AM on November 14, 2009

Oh, I'm not a grain brewer at all. I only used some specialty grains steeping, which isn't really that hard. As for the flavor you want, use a lot of the modern West Coast hops. Cascade, Columbus, Centennial (the latter two seem to be the majority of Ruination's hops), and so on. 90 Minute, for example, gets around tasting too bitter by also being a malt bomb. It's really a pretty darn sweet beer (like most Dogfish head beers). Hop Stoopid I've found to be more straight up bitter and less balanced. Stoopid seems to be Yakima Magnum and Cascade, mostly.

Just so you know it's hard for a home brewer to get the really clean, pure IPA/IIPA flavor because of the smaller boil size and other factors, which isn't to say you can't come close. So, if you don't want to even try a grain bag, I'd suggest still doing the late malt additions (adding maybe 1/4-1/2 of your total malt extract to your boil, depending on how big your boil is), and using West Coast hops that you like the smell of and people describe having the flavor profile you like.
posted by skynxnex at 8:52 AM on November 14, 2009 [1 favorite]

skynxnex: why are you adding your malt extract at different (and late) stages of the boil?

sanka: if you're looking for kits, I've used them from SF Brewcraft and Morebeer. Both gave excellent results, but Morebeer kits are set up in the most foolproof way (clear labels, clear instructions, everything comes with Whirlfloc).
posted by hammurderer at 8:58 AM on November 14, 2009

hammurderer: for concentrated stove top boils (like when you're boiling 2.5 gallons, but you're going to add water for a 5 gallon batch), you will caramelize the sugars and hop extraction rates go down as the concentration of the wort goes up. So if you spend most of your boil (a full 60 minutes is almost always needed for good hop extraction) with only half of the malt added, you're boiling the wort close to what you want your final original gravity to be. Reducing caramelization and increasing hop extraction yields.

It's just as easy as the normal extract brewing method (with one more step because of the two malt additions),but better results. (Oh, and I had the multiple time late additions because I was letting it fully dissolve (and not boil over because of the dry malt) before adding the rest.)
posted by skynxnex at 9:14 AM on November 14, 2009

For your level of homebrewing, hop extracts are unnecessary. Just use more hops and hops with higher alpha acid levels. Dry hopping is probably a good idea, too; it'll mainly get you aromas, but will add a little fresh hop flavor. JimmyJames is right that Cascades are pretty much synonymous with that citrusy, California IPA flavor, but there are other varieties you should try.

Amarillo and Centennial are really good American IPA hops. They have a good citrus flavor, and are higher in alpha acids ( ~11 or 12%) in alpha acids than Cascades (max ~8 or 9%), so you can use them for bittering and flavoring additions. Simcoe also has good citrus flavor and is a really good bittering hop (12 to 14% AA), but it has some piney flavor too (which I love, but I can understand why some folks wouldn't). A new hop variety was released last year: Citra. I haven't used them, and I've heard that they're scarce right now, but a friend of mine has used them and said the citrus quality they imbue is amazing. They're also higher in alpha acids than Cascades. There are a couple others that would fit that American IPA profile -- Ahatnum, Summit -- but I haven't used them much.

I think I do this w/every brewing question I answer, but you should really get in touch with your local homebrew club (like this one, perhaps?). Getting involved with a club will get you access to expertise from fellow homebrewers, their (often award-winning) recipes, and give you an in to brew with them on a more advanced setup (or even borrow their equipment -- many homebrewers really are this nice). It can also reduce your brewing costs if you participate in group buys of grain, hops, etc.

I'll post a recipe or two after work.
posted by cog_nate at 12:58 PM on November 14, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'd like to reiterate skynxnex's point about wort concentration and hop levels, if you want to really make some hoppy IPAs. Extract brewers usually boil strongly concentrated wort and then top off their batch with plain water post-boil to get a total of 5 gallons. Because they aren't doing a full boil, their maximum theoretical hop utilization is lower than if they were boiling all 5 gallons.

Anecdotal evidence: one of the first batches of beer I ever made, I decided that I wanted to make an extremely hoppy IPA. Due to a recent windfall of hops (non-brewer friend who grew hops gave me his entire crop), I decided to buy an IPA extract kit and then "upgrade" it with my new hops. I followed the directions for the kit and boiled about 2.5 gallons of water, plus I dumped a ton of my own hops in there. We're talking like a POUND of hops in the boil here, plus I dry-hopped it as well. The finished beer was certainly hoppy, but it was nothing like the extreme IPAs I was hoping to mimic. Only later did I learn about efficiency of hop utilization.

If you are using kits (or recipes you find on the Internet), I'd like to emphasize that you should boil as much water as you are able, not just what the recipe tells you to do. If you have a larger kettle and your stove can produce enough heat to boil more water, then do it! You will probably make better-tasting beer. (**side note: remember that you have to cool down whatever wort you heat up, so if you are using the ice-bath cooling method, you might need more ice**). Many of the (excellent) kits from Midwest, Northern Brewer, Austin Homebrew Supply, and other sellers say to boil a set amount of water, like 2 gallons. They just say this number because it's an amount that most customers can handle, not because it's important that you boil 2, and only 2, gallons of water. Boil as much as you can handle.

Also, dry-hopping will add strong hop aroma if you like that property in your beer.

As far as finding recipes goes, you mentioned that you don't do grain, but don't fear the steeping grains. They only add a little time to your brewing process, and they give you much more versatility and fresh flavor over what extract alone can provide. You can buy a paint-strainer bag from a home improvement store for less than a dollar and steep all the specialty grains you ever want in that.

Lastly, I also want to note the wealth of recipe information available on the internet at sites such as HomeBrewTalk. People frequently post recipes there for others to critique and give advice. Often, brewers will even write back to report how the beer turned out and how they would improve it in the future. Happy brewing!
posted by wondercow at 7:37 PM on November 14, 2009

I think I misspoke above. skynxnex talked about sparging, and I took that in the full grain brewer way. I generally boil a grain bag, add malt, hops etc. I also boil a full 5 gallons when I brew.

I'm very interested in the hop discussion, also the hop utilization discussion.

I love the answers guys, really, it's more informative than I have found anywhere. Please, keep going!
posted by sanka at 11:16 PM on November 14, 2009

A few more words on hop usage that might be of interest to you. Have you heard of first wort hopping? It's a technique where brewers add hops to the warm wort as they drain it from the mash tun, before the boil. John Palmer says it offers a "more refined" hop aroma and a more even bitterness to the beer. You said you aren't mashing your beer, but perhaps it would be worth adding hops during the grain steeping step, if you are steeping around 150*F? I don't know enough about the chemistry behind first wort hopping to tell you if that would work with extract brewing, but that might be worth looking into further.

Another hop tip that comes to mind is to make sure you are storing your hops correctly. The fresher your hops, the better they are going to taste. The alpha-acids in the hops (the property you want for your beer) will oxidize with air over time, so you want to minimize this to get your best hop utilization. When you buy your hops, you can keep them fresher by keeping them cold (such as in the freezer), which slows the oxidation process. Just don't keep them in there too long or you might find yourself with freezerburned hops. The type of container your hops come in matters too. Vacuum-packed hop pellets in double-layered mylar bags will obviously store better than hops that you get from your local homebrew supply store in a sandwich baggie. Regardless of how you store them, your hops will lose alpha-acids over time, so it's ideal to use them as early as possible to maximize your hops. For wayyyy more information than anyone needs to know about this, I recommend this page.

Old hops kind of smell like cheese, and your only hope to salvage such hops is to boil them as long as possible. This is fine for your bittering hops, which need to be boiled a long time anyways, but aroma hops shouldn't be boiled for so long or you will lose all their character. Personally, I like my high-IBU beers to have a balance of flavor and aroma, so consider the freshness of your hops when designing your recipes.

Also, to maximize the flavor of the hops when you drink your beer, remember to drink your IPAs fresh! Hop flavor deceases the longer your store your beer, so make haste to consume your hoppy beers. If I remember correctly, one of the imperial IPAs (it might have been Avery's Maharaja or Pliny the Elder, but I forget now) actually had a warning on the bottle calling you a fool if you didn't drink the beer as soon as possible to get maximum hop flavor. Not knowing this, I brewed an IPA once and decided to condition it for about six months to see if I could improve the flavor. When I popped a bottle, it tasted like an old ale, not an IPA at all. All of the hop character was completely gone--beware!
posted by wondercow at 8:10 PM on November 15, 2009