Lots of hops, disappointing flavour/aroma?

[David R]

On paper, the last IPA I brewed should have been an absolute cracker. 1.066 OG, Columbus for bittering, 60g Mosaic/Simcoe/Amarillo at 10min, 180g at 0 (steeped for 5 minutes before cooling to 80C and steeped for another 25min), an 160g dry hopped for 7 days. Fermented with US05 at 18C, rising to 20C towards the end to bring it down to 1.011 FG. Brewing on a Grainfather, ended up with just over 20L in the fermenter.

It smelled OK when being kegged, not mind-blowing given the quantity of hops, and after a week in the keg it is completely underwhelming. Nice malt body, good aggressive bitterness, but almost completely lacking any sort of citruis/fruit/pine/etc flavours that it should really be bursting with.

There's two things I'm thinking of; the first is that the Amarillo has been in my freezer for about 10-12 months and the Simcoe about 6 months, the Mosaic was fresh from the shop and smells amazing too. I know they do degrade over time, but given the amount I used I thought there should be at least some flavour there. The second thing is that I'm brewing with rain water (that's what supplies the house) so it is completely devoid of any minerals. In the past I've added about 0.5t each Epsom Salts, Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Sulphate just to give it a little something, but recently I've been leaving it out to see what happens (while I try to get my head properly around adjusting water for brewing). Could this have affected the utilisation of the hops?

Any other suggestions on why this may have happened? I've brewed plenty of hoppy beers in the past and people are usually fairly complimentary of the results. The hoppy pils I brewed before the IPA turned out great (no water additives and fresh NZ hops).

[David R]

Just as a follow up, in an attempt to help the beer I've added the "left over" hops (~90g Amarillo, 60g Citra and 30g Riwaka) to the keg in a mesh bag. The hops, including the Amarillo, still smelled good going into the keg so hopefully that makes it worth drinking.

[Samuel Loader]

I think you have also dry hopped for too long and too early in the fermentation, the yeast change the hop characteristics during fermentation and the length of time I find for Amarillo more of the grassy flavours come out. from the brewing publications book "Hops" Luke from Epic uses about 200g of dry hops for 3 days at 20C. I usually use WLP 001 which i find ferments quickly so i will ramp up and do a D rest then come back down to 20C hold for 2-3 days of dry hop then rack off the hops and start my secondary, which has yielded good results. one more point on mesh bags is that the can limit the exposure of the hops to the beer so if using a mesh bag I normally add an extra 10-20g of hops 

[Crusader-Rob]

i dryhop for a max of 5 days, includingthe cold crash. I've been thinking about dropping further.

[Crusader-Rob]

Ph and Water Salt Additions are relatively important to beers like this.

also, considering 1.011 finish, does it taste dry, or slightly sweet? I'm wondering if theres any sort os Diacetyl, maskingthe mass aroma?

diacetyl comes across as a butter or sbutterscotch taste in most cases, but it can be perceived as a caramel sweetness, which wouldnt normally be expected. google diacetyl test to see how to determine if there is or not.

[Grant R Baker]

That's a hell of a lot of hops for 20L.... but yes old hops can really drop off.

I recently checked a old batch of Citra against and new batch by dropping the 0.6g of each into a cup of hot boiled water.

The old was okay armoa wise but lacked the punch of the new, bitternes wise the old was rubbish and lacked flavour too.

So now I its fresh hops for IPAs... try not to overload the freezer.

Normally in an IPA I use a touch (5g) Gypsom and Epsom salts but that is whats lacking in Hutt Valley water.

You mentioned a big malty body... if you go towards a lighter malt base (say 98% base and 2% crystal/munich etc) then the hops will be more prominent and you will need less to bitter and flavour the beer.

I take it you used a good IPA yeast (US-05, WLP001, 1056 etc)

[mattd2]

I have not really had great results with whirlpool / dry hops (so don't pay too much attention to this), but it is something I want to work on this year to get a nice PA / IPA that is bursting with aroma/flavour (like you). The one thing that jumped out at me was whirlpooling at 100-80°C may have driven off the volatile compounds too quickly and left with little flavour/aroma left in the beer. Looking at a BYO article (https://byo.com/mead/item/2808-hop-stands) and the temperature ranges for hop stands they were looking at were 88-100°C / 71-77°C / 60-66°C. Quickly reading through the article it doesn't really get how long each temperature should be left for. It does say that the higher temps will result in quicker solubilising into the wort but doesn't say much on how it effects them vaporising off. I guess what I am saying is maybe drop the hop stand temp down to 70°C(ish) and maybe split the final additions, 90g at 0 mins with 5 min steep then drop to 70°C and through in another 90g for a 30 min hop stand.

One side note from that article was they state that dry hopping with a pound of Amarillo per barrel produced the same results as dry hopping with 1/2 a pound per barrel - so once you get to a point more hops may not mean more "hops".

[David R]

Will reply in more detail when I'm not in my phone in a car...
I didn't add the dry hops until after 10 days and by that stage the gravity was down to 1.012.
Grain bill was all Gladfields, about 5% redback 3% shepherds delight and the rest pale ale. Not too dry, dark orange in colour, probably would have been lovely with big tropical fruit flavours if it turned out as planned.

[Harry]

This is most likely a water issue I feel.

Rainwater is no where near as pure as you would imagine, picks up all manner of contaminants especially if you don't have a flush diverter. 

I would filter and then add salts (this is next up in my brewery). 

[David R]

The water I brew with is run through a 0.4 micron filter, and the are 007ppm (yep, seven!) Total Dissolved Solids, so there's not much of anything in there (for comparison my tap water when we lived in East Auckland was more like 90ppm). I agree that the lack of minerals is largely to blame though, time to give myself a lesson in chemistry...

[Harry]

Brewers friend has a free calculator, or there is another one you pay for called bru n water which people seem to like.

Whats does your filter set up consist of? Currently looking at setting one up myself.

[David R]

There's an inline one that does the whole house supply, can't remember exactly how fine, then a couple of under bench units for drinking/brewing water. I keep the tank clean too, and we don't have any over-hanging trees. I takes a while to get 30+ litres through the filter, but its worth it IMO. I'll look up the exact specs of the filter when I'm back home in a couple of days time.

[Peter Church]

agree that this is water chemistry,  you need to up your Sulphate content/ratio I suspect 1-2 tsps of gypsum is a minimum and 0.5 tsp epsom salts, need the sulphate to carbonate ratio to be high (+2/1) for hop forward beers

John Palmer talking on Residual alkalinity link below,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJj__jEkFUE