Remove Hops and Additional Boil Time

swag · March 10, 2012, 11:00pm

I was without my brew software today and my guess on water amount caused me to collect too much wort. I boiled for an hour before adding hops. After an hour, I started my 60 min. hop schedule. I use a hop bag. At the end of the 2nd 60 min boil, I still had around 3/4 Gallon too much wort. So I removed the hops and boiled an additional 20 minutes. I then added the hops back into the wort (I sterilized a container and placed the hops inside and put on a lid) and boiled for an additional 5 minutes.

Has anyone done something similar? And how did it affect your beer?

After the additional boil time, I hit my numbers perfectly. I guess I’m just curious how the hop flavor and aroma will be affected. Thoughts?

brewdoc · March 11, 2012, 1:43am

Bitterness (IBU’s) might be slightly higher due to the extra 5 min boil time after you added back the hops, but the bigger difference will be in the loss of the more volatile flavor and aroma (especially aroma) compounds with the extra 25 min total boil time. If it had been me, I’d have just settled for a larger final volume of a slightly weaker beer (lower OG), but with a hop profile closer to your original plans. Consider dry hopping with leaf hops of the same/similar variety as the last (5 min or less left in boil) hop addition to try to restore some of the hop aroma.

swag · March 11, 2012, 1:51am

I already plan to dry hop for 5 days (half leaf and half pellet) with the same hops. Should I maybe go a few days longer? 10 Days?

And thanks for the input.

fimbrew · March 12, 2012, 5:09am

Dude I’ve been in that situation before. I had a homebrew and relaxed. Always turns out fine. Unless you are trying to hit a style for a competition a few points of OG or 20 mins longer boil will not make a big difference.

shadetree · March 12, 2012, 2:27pm

You get ~5% extra bitterness with a 90-minute boil compared to a 60.

swag · April 11, 2012, 8:04pm

In case anyone is interested, I ended up dry hopping for 14 days and as this is the 3rd time I’ve brewed this particular recipe, I am unable to detect much difference in taste from previous batches. The aroma may be a bit less than normal, but now overly so.

Anyway, I’m now relaxed and having a homebrew.