Hop layering vs. single variety additions at different times

Brewed a IPA yesterday:

75% 2 row
5% crystal 20
5% crystal 40
10% melanoidin
5% table sugar

I was using Jamil’s (Vinnie Cilurzo’s? Tasty McD’s?) IPA as a baseline recipe, which calls for something like the following:

1oz horizon 60 min
1oz centennial 20 min
1oz amarillo 10 min
1oz cascade 5 mi
1oz centennial FO

I had some Caliente’s I wanted to use, but instead of using only one varietal at each addition, I blended each addition so it was more like the following:

20 min - .3oz centennial, .3 oz amarillo, .3oz caliente
etc. etc.

Does anyone know the benefits of this method? I was looking to get a more layered, complex hop profile particularly in the flavoring/aroma. FYI, I bittered with .75 oz magnum @ 60, with a 90 min boil.

Just from the table sugar I know that’s not a Vinnie or Tasty recipe :stuck_out_tongue: Tasty does like to use CaraPils & dextrose in his though.

I love playing around with different combinations of hops like that. You can get that more interesting character you’re looking for, but it’s extremely easy to go overboard with it. I would suggest picking one specific addition & using only 2 hops there. A 15/20 min addition is a good one to play with. Find out how those 2 hops work together & go from there. You could do 2 batches where you adjust nothing but the ratio of those 2 hops to learn about what they’re contributing & in what amounts. Get a good feel for balancing 2 hops before adding more to the mix or you’ll end up muddying up your hop profile. Think of it like a sandwich. You don’t take your bread, 1 slice of meat, 1 slice of cheese & put a half cup of mustard on there (thanks Palmer) - it’ll be out of balance & all you get is the mustard. The same way you wouldn’t blend 13 different kinds of mustard on there either as you wouldn’t be able to tell where all those different flavors are coming from & would likely just be a mustardy mess that would’ve been better as just 1. You might discover that .5 oz of mustard makes the perfect sandwich, then you could try splitting that .5 oz between a stone ground & a yellow mustard. Perhaps you might like 75% stone or 25% stone… the blend of just those 2 could create an array of different flavors.

Just remember to use scientific process when trying to discover details on one particular ingredient (or process). Change only 1 variable at a time; don’t taste the beer, identify what you want different & then try to fix them all at once. Even if you do succeed you won’t know exactly what fixed it & likely won’t be able to repeat that fix, especially in different recipes. If I’m deadset on dialing in a certain thing, I’ll brew the exact same recipe several times in a row with that one change each time & compare.

You may end up with depth and complexity, or you may end up with a muddled mess. Yneed to think about what each addition will taste like and bring to the finished beer.

I love blending hops, seems to add a nice complexity to the beer. I usually just blend 2 or 3 and use those for every hop addition. One of my favorites is Simcoe, Chinook, and Cascade. Another is just Chinook and Cascade.
I brewed with a Simcoe and Amarillo blend the other day. Looking forward to it.

So yeah, blending is a good idea!

+1

I kind of took inspiration from Zythos and Falconer’s Flight, and tried my hand at making my own hop blend. The IIPA I used it in turned into a muddled mess. Certain hops overpowered, and others just faded into the background.

Think about what each hop will do at each addition. I will blend certain hops throughout all my late additions. I like doing this with Amarillo, Cent, Simcoe, Citra - the typical American IPA hops seem to work well like this. Others I will keep just for flavor hops or aroma hops. For example, Nelson Sauvin tends to dominate the aroma when used as a dry hop, so I tend to add it around 10 minutes and keep it out of the dry hops unless it is intended to be the headliner in a beer. I have some Columbus that has an incredible dank, resinous character. I will use it at 20-30 minutes when I want that resinous flavor to be the lead note in the beer, but I’ll save it for dry hops with a few other fruitier varieties when I just want to add some complexity.

I find Caliente to have an earthy, Fuggle-ish flavor; so I tend to reserve it for flameout and dry-hop additions in American-style APA’s & IPA’s. I’ve never blended it, so the earthiness may be low enough to just add complexity at the levels you used it at. I’m interested to hear how this brew turns out for you.

+1

I kind of took inspiration from Zythos and Falconer’s Flight, and tried my hand at making my own hop blend. The IIPA I used it in turned into a muddled mess. Certain hops overpowered, and others just faded into the background.

Think about what each hop will do at each addition. I will blend certain hops throughout all my late additions. I like doing this with Amarillo, Cent, Simcoe, Citra - the typical American IPA hops seem to work well like this. Others I will keep just for flavor hops or aroma hops. For example, Nelson Sauvin tends to dominate the aroma when used as a dry hop, so I tend to add it around 10 minutes and keep it out of the dry hops unless it is intended to be the headliner in a beer. I have some Columbus that has an incredible dank, resinous character. I will use it at 20-30 minutes when I want that resinous flavor to be the lead note in the beer, but I’ll save it for dry hops with a few other fruitier varieties when I just want to add some complexity.

I find Caliente to have an earthy, Fuggle-ish flavor; so I tend to reserve it for flameout and dry-hop additions in American-style APA’s & IPA’s. I’ve never blended it, so the earthiness may be low enough to just add complexity at the levels you used it at. I’m interested to hear how this brew turns out for you.[/quote]

Nice, thanks! I also FWH’d with CTZ, so I’m hoping there’s a nice dank backbone to link up with the malt to follow what will hopefully be a complex, pine, citrus, stone fruit aroma. Also, just a single magnum addition @ 60.

I’m going to use Tasty’s method and start dry-hopping (Cascade, Cent, Amarillo) at the tail end of fermentation, which happens to be today, so I will pull a sample and see if I can determine any desired or undesired flavors at this point.

Hmm, i so badly want to mess with my current kit. Below is the hop schedule. I have tons of 2012 citra, simcoe, and amarillo and I am dying to use them, but the hop additions for the kit don’t look half bad.

Would you leave it as is, or modify it?

  1. add 1 oz Warrior bittering hops. (60 Minutes)
  2. Blend 1 oz. Amarillo, 1 oz. Citra hops.
  3. Add 1/5th of the 2 oz. hop blend at: 20, 15, 10, 5, and 0 minutes left in the boil.
  4. Ferment and after 1 week dry hop with 3 oz - 1oz Ahtanum/1oz Amarillo/1ozSimcoe

Looks like it might work. Won’t know until you try it. I would reconsider the dry hops to match your blend a little closer though, mostly to get a better feel for your blend in the final product. What if your blend doesn’t work so well but the dry hops cover it up or the exact opposite? It’d be slightly more difficult to analyze. It might work out perfectly though, you never know. I’d try equal amounts of the Citra/Amarillo with half that amount of Simcoe, but that’s just me.

[quote=“mppatriots”]Hmm, i so badly want to mess with my current kit. Below is the hop schedule. I have tons of 2012 citra, simcoe, and amarillo and I am dying to use them, but the hop additions for the kit don’t look half bad.

Would you leave it as is, or modify it?

  1. add 1 oz Warrior bittering hops. (60 Minutes)
  2. Blend 1 oz. Amarillo, 1 oz. Citra hops.
  3. Add 1/5th of the 2 oz. hop blend at: 20, 15, 10, 5, and 0 minutes left in the boil.
  4. Ferment and after 1 week dry hop with 3 oz - 1oz Ahtanum/1oz Amarillo/1ozSimcoe[/quote]

Is this an IPA? 2oz total for the hopburst seems a bit low to me. I’d do 0.5 ounces of the blend at 20, 15, 10 and 5, then an ounce of each at flameout. May want to add a little Simcoe at flameout as well if you’re going to dry-hop with it.

It is an IPA. Why would you want simcoe at flameout if you are going to dry hop with it. I guess i don’t fully understand what end of boil additions versus dry hop additions do for you. I always assumed they were there because they add some flavor as yeast blow away the flavor and dry hop because that is where you get a lot of flavor.