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]

Thanks for the link, I think I learn better by listening/watching than by reading, I've read his book repeatedly but I'm still struggling to get my head around it.

[Doublehoppy]

You may be interested in this suggestion for improving hop profile. This is a verbatim posting by Mike Neilson of Panhead on this forum in his HB days in 2010. I've been meaning to do this but each time I've missed the boat..the SG is too close to FG to get the activity within the Jerry Can.

This is my Dryhopping schedule and I think my results have improved ten fold since doing this is I to ferment within 8-10 points of termianal gravity (watch the krausen it will tell you) then rack to a 20L Jerry Can with the hops, screw the top on tight and let it do its thing for 3-6 days (all depends on size off balls) Crash cool to zero chuck in some cow hoof keep it there over night and you have brilliant clear beer with f all shit going into keg or bottle (+ Carb Solution). The reason for dry hoping and crash cooling in the same vessel is that the c02 that would of been let into the atmosphere remains in the jerry can and can dissolve back into solution, when you crash cool it all that Hoppy aroma c02 gets reasborbed into solution. The beer will go into the keg at about 1 vol of Co2 + 1 vol of c02, opposed to 2 vos of c02. If you think 'heck 1 vol isnt much' You totally fucking wrong!! Theres my tip. anyone else want to shed some???

[DMAC]

I can see the water additions having some affect on the perception of bitterness and maybe on flavour but I have a hard time believing it reduced the aroma. I think old hops and oxygenation are more likely. Doublehoppy's post sounds like a good starting place based on my limited experience with these things. I dry hop in the primary but whish I had a way of dryhopping in the keg that didn't lead to clogged beer lines...

[David R]

Cheers Doublehoppy, interesting info. I'd love to hear if anyone else has tried that technique.

DMAC when you say "oxygenation", do you mean too much or not enough?  I did give it a good vigorous shaking after pitching the yeast (which took off like a rocket), but other than that I'm careful to avoid stirring/disturbing it too much.

[DMAC]

I think after fermentation is complete then oxygenation becomes a problem. Though the co2 carrying off the aroma sounds like it could be a factor too since co2 is used as the solvent when making hop oil. I guess in general the idea is to prevent anything from getting in or out once primary has completed.

[David R]

Just a bit of a follow up, I'm in the middle of brewing a simple APA and thought I'd use up the remaining 110g of Mosaic from the IPA in the original post. I FWH'd the APA with 22g of Nelson Sauvin and was hit with a pungent aroma while the sparge ran. At 10 minutes to go I put in 30g of Mosaic and smelled ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I can only assume they're old stock and well past their prime. There's just no discernible hop aroma, which is not what you'd expect with even a relatively small addition of Americas finest. Luckily I had more Sauvin and some Brooklyn to replace the big whirlpool addition of Mosaic, certainly smells good now with them steeping!

[Crusader-Rob]

hey, IO was just reading up some stuff, and found this exert from the article

"when you dry hop over a certain point, the pH of the beer can start to rise and affect the flavor and aroma, and needs to be adjusted with acid."

Could this be the issue?

[David R]

Perhaps after the second attempt to dry hop in the keg, by then it would have had around 300g dry, but none of it for too long (5 days total each time).

I did a 4L Mosaic/extract trial brew which has nearly done fermenting, maybe I'll dial back the DH to a more conventional level (still 5-6g/L) to see how that goes. It smelled OK after the boil, but not great considering how much Mosaic I used.

[Crusader-Rob]

Fair enough - Certainly somethingto think about though.