I was wondering if dropping hops in right before you turn off the burner (@ 0 min) makes a difference if you are using an immersion chiller versus a counterflow chiller. I have a counterflow chiller, and in the recipes I make with hops @ 0 and no dry hops, I don’t get the aroma I’ve experienced with other brewers doing the same.
If I want to get the aroma from 0 hops, do I need to get an immersion chiller, or is there some way to achieve this with a counterflow?
Couple months ago I moved from an immersion chiller to a therminator and am still adjusting but I’ve been letting the flame out hops ‘steep’ for 15-30 minutes to give them a chance to give up their goodness before I cool down. It isn’t as long as a ‘hop stand’ that you’ll find some info on if you do a search but it seems to work. I do find doing that does add some bitterness though, particularly when using a pile of flame out hops. To compensate I just shoot low on my bitterness coming from the boil (no good way to calculate IBU’s from a hop stand that I’ve seen), far from scientific but I’ve been happy with the results.
Hopefully others will chime in with their experiences too. :cheers:
I recently brewed a dipa solely with a 1.5oz chinook bittering charge and threw a 6oz mixture of simcoe and amarillo in at flame out, whirlpooled heavily and let stand for ~80 mins before chilling. (My temps were still higher than 170F when I started the chiller)
To test the aroma contribution of this, I moved 2 gallons from primary to seconday and dry hopped with another 1.5oz of the same mixture.
After 4 weeks in the bottle, I do have more aroma from the dry hopped portion, but the 3 gal portion solely with the 80 min stand has a very punchy hop nose and ridiculous hop flavor. I’m curious how these two will differ as the weeks go by. I’ve only tried 1 of each, as I plan to crack into these for my b-day in a couple of weeks.
So in my minimal experience you can get a ton of aroma/flavor from an extended stand.
I move my kettle from the garage to the basement and set it up on 2 milk crates in the laundry sink to let it gravity flow. Hard to say what the liquid temp is once it falls below the thermometer, butI’m pretty sure it’s still way above 170*F.
I was wondering if about halfway through the chilling process (2.5 gallons in the fermenting bucket), if I dropped the hops into the kettle then, if that would boost the aroma.
I guess I could try it and find out.
Waiting for 2.5 gallons to drain could boost aroma, but how long do you estimate the hops will be in hot wort?
If it’s only for 10-15 minutes, I would save the hops to dry hop with.
