How do you make one? Do you steep in hot water or actually boil them? I have a beer that is higher alcohol than I expected (8.8% ABV) and low IBUs (60). Do teas impart bad flavors?
If you want to add IBUs, boil a quart of the beer with an oz of high alpha hops - water extracts a nasty grassy character that doesn’t go away. If you want hop character, do it with 160F beer in a French press.
i used a hop tea once for a double ipa kit from nb per their instructions, never again.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/doub ... t-kit.htmlcame out gross, got that grassy flavor shadetree mentioned, plus for the amount of hops, not a lot of hop flavor or aroma.
from now on i’m only boiling hops in my wort.
~christine
I agree. Doesn’t matter whether you boil or steep the hops in water, the end result is harsh and nasty.
[quote=“eponai”]i used a hop tea once for a double ipa kit from nb per their instructions, never again.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/doub ... t-kit.htmlcame out gross, got that grassy flavor shadetree mentioned, plus for the amount of hops, not a lot of hop flavor or aroma.
from now on i’m only boiling hops in my wort.
~christine[/quote]
I did that kit but had read on here about the hop tea turning the beer to crap in just water. So what I did was when I added the extract to the 2.5 gallons, I took off about a quart and added it to 2 quarts of tap water in another pot. Once the big pot got back to boiling I added the hops to the tea (low gravity wort, really) and combined them at the end of 60 minutes. That DIPA was delicious and even at 9%ABV, I kicked the keg in less than a month.
I don’t think if I made a hop tea I would add to wort/beer and I cannot recall where I picked this up (Kai?) but the water used for a hop tea should acidified near wort pH if you want it to taste similar to beer. I suppose I would try and adjust to finished beer pH if I was correcting something in a finished beer. That said, the result is still nasty and grassy, but much less so than without acidification. You can kinda pick out the hop’s character but not like in finished beer.
interesting, you may be on to something there indeed. i did a ph test of my plain water, and then my water after grain was added, nothng else. the ph dropped from 8.0 to 5.1.
[quote=“zwiller”]That said, the result is still nasty and grassy, but much less so than without acidification. You can kinda pick out the hop’s character but not like in finished beer.[/quote]So why would you go this route (acidified water versus beer)? If you take a little beer and steep or even boil the hops it’ll just be beer.
interesting, you may be on to something there indeed. i did a ph test of my plain water, and then my water after grain was added, nothng else. the ph dropped from 8.0 to 5.1.[/quote]
I’ve also tried adjusting the water for a hop tea. It was still gross and disgusting.
