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  • Hop bill worries

    Worried about high hop bill

    Dear all

    We are just starting up our micro brewery and we are planning to do a PA or a IPA but due to the fact that we are in Colombia South America the hops are extremely costly. We know that a good IPA uses a ton of hops.

    We have at the moment the following hops at our disposal

    Columbus/CTZ
    Chinook
    Centennial
    Summit

    What would you recommend? A pale ale? A IPA?
    What could we do to reduce hop bill?

    Grateful for any suggestions.

  • #2
    Both styles require a nice crisp hop note, especially for an American Pale or IPA. A pale ale requires less of a hop bill and they are not dry hopped like an IPA would be, again reducing you hop load.

    I'd use the Centennial at the start of the boil for bittering and the Chinook at knockout for aroma.

    You will have to determine your utilization and grain bill in order to calculate the hop rate.

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    • #3
      I'd say general suggestions to reduce hop usage would be:

      -Use your highest alpha hops for bittering. This'll lessen the poundage needed, and variety is less important, as not a lot of individual character (prepared for flamers here) survives a 60-90 minute boil.
      -Maybe go for more of an "old-school" IPA were you're focused less on aroma and flavor (which take big, late additions and dry hopping), and more on straight up early-addition bitterness (I still love a good tongue-shredding every now and then) and an addition around 30 minutes or so.
      -If you're going for late additions, use hops with the most hop oils. Myrcene, humulene, farnesene, etc. if you can find out that information. Do a little research into these oils, and I think you can come up with a good idea of how to utilize the proper hops to maximize aroma/flavor while minimizing poundage input. Keep in mind a lot of those compounds have lower boiling points than water, so they may need to be added at lower temperatures to get the best bang for your back.
      -And, maybe just brew styles that aren't as hop-centric. I'd say go APA over IPA, or even better, go EnglishPA, as I can imagine it may be easier to get European noble hops than American specialty hops down there.

      Just spitballin' here.

      Comment


      • #4
        Co2 Extract

        I would also recommend looking into Co2 extract, clean bitterness and you can add the flavor hop note/varieties in the mid and late additions plus dry hopping.
        I used Appolo, from Steiner.
        Was a great base bitterness to work with.

        Lance

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        • #5
          To conserve hops for an ipa: bitter to your wanted IBU with a 60 min addition, do a ~10 oz per bbl addition during whirlpool. Then do another 10oz per BBL addition during the dry hop stage, after the beer drops relatively clear. You should get enough aroma and flavor out of those hops to happily call it an IPA.
          Last edited by Junkyard; 01-16-2016, 11:28 PM.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by jonatanejonatan View Post
            Worried about high hop bill

            Dear all

            We are just starting up our micro brewery and we are planning to do a PA or a IPA but due to the fact that we are in Colombia South America the hops are extremely costly. We know that a good IPA uses a ton of hops.

            We have at the moment the following hops at our disposal

            Columbus/CTZ
            Chinook
            Centennial
            Summit

            What would you recommend? A pale ale? A IPA?
            What could we do to reduce hop bill?

            Grateful for any suggestions.
            All those hops will make a fine IPA if combined, but go easy on the CTZ and the Chinook.

            You can make the hops stand out by making a base beer that is dry and crisp (mash low, drop caramel malts, add some sugar), make sure you have plenty sulfate in the water helps as well (>100 PPM).

            You can also reuse the dry- and kettle hops in the mash of the next brew or use the spent late hops from an IPA as bittering hops in another brew. Calculating the AA% can be a challenge though. Mash hopping with the previous days kettle hops is something we do all the time and beyond providing a bit of flavor and bitterness it also helps run off greatly (we're using whole flower hops).

            As for quantities I would recommend 1kg of hops per HL divided equally between the kettle and the fermenter. But you can probably get away with less.

            -Christian

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