Inspired by a discussion that early hop additions carry some flavor to the brew I decided to try an old school meets new school IPA. Mash hopped, FWH, and additions every 15m and then every 5m at 15m mark and then a big old hopstand. Sounded (and smelled!) great until I tried sparging… Stuck! Managed to finagle enough wort to boil and the resulting wort was within 2pts so I consider success but will probably not revisit mash hopping. I used pellets, maybe I should have used whole hops, but didn’t think much of it. Kinda funny, it’s been a loong time since I had a stuck mash.
Anyone else think early additions have some flavor?
The contribution of hops in mash hopping is close to zip, according to pretty much all sources. You get a measurable, but extremely negligible bittering increase which could be made up with the smallest fraction of the quantity, and the full boil pretty much removes any flavor contribution.
Totally agree that conventional wisdom and my skepticism says these early additions should not impart anything but there are some that disagree. That goes for FWH too. I just need to see for myself. It has been a long time since I added anything early in the boil with my IPA, in addition, I always used neutral hops when I did. For this one, I used the same hops and quantity (same malt bill too) as my previous one but just changed the timing of the additions. To add to old school vibe, I used dry yeast US05. Brewed Sunday and already post krausen.
No, FWH is different. In my experience you’ll get similar bittering to a 60 minute kettle addition (although I’ve read that it will measure slightly higher), but slightly less sharp. The loss of that harshness seems to actually accentuate the flavor of the bittering addition.
I’ve read many people’s descriptions of first wort hop additions as acting more like flavoring hops, specifically adding flavor, but it is my own current theory that those flavors are there also from a standard bittering addition, but they get masked by the sharper edge of the bittering, whereas the smoother FWH addition allows that flavor to be more easily perceived.
[quote=“bhanson”]No, FWH is different. In my experience you’ll get similar bittering to a 60 minute kettle addition (although I’ve read that it will measure slightly higher), but slightly less sharp. The loss of that harshness seems to actually accentuate the flavor of the bittering addition.
I’ve read many people’s descriptions of first wort hop additions as acting more like flavoring hops, specifically adding flavor, but it is my own current theory that those flavors are there also from a standard bittering addition, but they get masked by the sharper edge of the bittering, whereas the smoother FWH addition allows that flavor to be more easily perceived.[/quote]
I’ve tried mash hopping 3 times and found it added nothing to the beer that I could detect. I still FWH fairly often. In an experiment I did comparing it to a 60 min. addition, I found that the FWH added more hop flavor and tasters generally preferred FWH beers.
