Dauss Options

[impala454]

You're the beer guru right? I keep seeing these beer commercials bragging about adding hopps multiple times during brewing. What's the big deal with that?

[dauss]

So, without getting too technical, hops contain hop resins consisting of alpha and beta acids. When they are boiled, they isomerize in the wort. Longer they boil the more they isomerize and you get more "hop utilization". After the alpha acids isomerize, they are now in the beer as iso-alpha acids and impart bitterness which is measured in International Bittering Units(IBU) on scale of 1-100, with a threshold of taste of 5(You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a a 50 IBU beer and a 53 IBU beer).

The reason you add them in different additions is to get different hop bitterness, flavor, and aroma in the beer.
When hops are boiled for 60+ minutes the aroma and flavor are lost during the boil leaving only bitterness. Aka the bittering addition of hops.
When hops are boiled for 20-40 minutes, the aroma is boiled off, some of the alpha acids isomerize leaving some bitterness and flavor. Aka the character addition of hops.
When hops are boiled for less than 15 minutes, the alpha acids don't have enough time to isomerize, only leaving aroma. Aka the finishing addition of hops.
The less you boil the more aroma you have, but you have to boil at least 20 minutes to get the flavor, and the longer the boil the more the bitterness.
You can even add hops into the fermentation vessel without any heat and this really boosts the aroma. This is called dry hopping.

Adding them at different stages produce different effects in the beer. If you only had the bittering addition of hops, it would be one dimensional without any complexity. Also from a style standpoint, they have to meet the general guidelines of style.

German Pilsner: good amount of bittering addition, tiny character addition, and finishing addition. This way you get the bitterness of the hops, still taste the crisp and clean pilsner malt body, and the aroma of the grassy German Noble hops.

Porter/stouts: Good amount of bittering addition, tiny character addition, and tiny aroma addition. Again, need that bitterness of the hops to even out the malt sweetness, but you really want the roasted malts to be the showcase of the beer.

India pale ales: A ton of bittering addition, a ton of character addition, a ton of aroma addition, and a good dose of dry hop. This one is all about the hops, tons of hop bitterness, tons of hop flavor, and tons of hop aroma.

I hope that helped.

[impala454]

Yeah that's interesting to know. I guess those beer commercials are assuming we all know that... heheh.