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Went to my local HBS to pick up some stuff for a JS Amber Ale. Plan to use Morgans Royal Oak Amber, Morgans Amber Liquid malt and a Willamette hops bag.
Anyway, the guy says we're out of Willamette bags at the moment but just use Tettnanger. He says its all about alpha acid and Willamette and Tettnanger are almost identical, you won't notice the difference.
The guy has always been pretty spot on in the past so I just go yeah righto and walk out with Tettnanger.
A few searches in the forums here have got me thinking that they're not that similar. Tettnanger seems to be used in lagers....
Is that because alpha acids are a measurement of bitterness? And to extract bitterness you need to boil for a while?
Does it also stand to reason that the best flavour/aroma hops are those with low alpha acids?
To return to the original point of the thread I am going to hang on to the tettnanger for a lager and go get a willamette bag from somewhere else for the JSAA.
Generally, the most powerful bittering hops are not renowned for their flavour or aroma, but there are MANY EXEPTIONS.
The point is, you cannot get a good mix of added flavour and bitterness by using one teabag, because as you boil them for longer to get more bitterness, you lose the flavour. So you have to put the hops in for different boil times. Because of this, people will use a variety of hops in their beer, usually a powerful bittering hop (I've used green bullet and horizon), and at least one other with nice flavour and aroma quality.
That said, it is possible tp make a beer with only one type of hops, you just need lots of them. Three of my batches have been made such a way. Two of them haven't been tasted yet (one's only about a week in the bottle, and the other I'll bottle on Saturday), but my Rauchbier was hopped entirely with Hallertauer-Herlsbrucker (sp?) hop pellets.
This was an all-grain, so I wasn't just building on what was already in the can, but hopping fron scratch. Needless to say, it made a very delicious beer! Having tasted this, I realised how simple you could do a partial or full mash brew, with only one 80g bag of hop pellets. Of course there are some beers you can't emulate with one hop, but if you're aiming for quality beer and aren't to worried about it not being exactly the same as a particular brand of beer.
yep, made one myself out of 8m of bendy copper pipe. Just twisted it round a paint tin.
To be honest, my all-grain and partial boil volumes are usually about 8-10L, because I can't get a bigger pot. The results have been pretty good though, haven't they?
Yeah, the pot's an issue. I'm trying to decide whether I'll go to mornington to get one this weekend. If I go, do you want a 40L?
Seeing as I have no access to a cheap supply of copper pipe, I reckon I might just buy a wort chiller. $120 I think the grain and grape guy said, for a high-ef (texture on the inside to induce turbulance) one. How much was your pipe?
I think it was about $40 all up. I think it's a bit on the cheap side, you get what you pay for. I think I'll keep using it until I get a bigger pot, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think I should have bought one.
That's what heppens when you take full-mashing advice from Brewcraft.
Blandy: Do you have a wort chiller I can buy?
Brewcraft guy: No, just make one yourself.
Ok, so maybe I did a crappy job at it, but I think the commercial ones are way better than bending a pipe around a paint tin.
My home-made Lautering tun was a huge success though. Just two big buckets, one with lots of holes drilled in the bottom. Don't know why you'd need anything more.
I have just got 12 metres of 1/2 inch copper, which is more than enough to make a chiller and a manifold for my first mash (yippee) at a total cost of $70 Which at that price was actually a little dearer than i first thought because copper went up by about 50% in the last couple of months, pretty cheap though when you look at about a 11 metre coil as a chiller and about a metre to buggerise around with and make a manifold
blandy wrote:
Ok, so maybe I did a crappy job at it, but I think the commercial ones are way better than bending a pipe around a paint tin.
I'm not sure about that blandy. The commercial types may be a little better, but as long as you have a sufficient amount of space between the coils, & it evenly covers the space of your boil kettle, I would imagine your paint tin model would come close in terms of efficency.
Does it also stand to reason that the best flavour/aroma hops are those with low alpha acids?
To return to the original point of the thread I am going to hang on to the tettnanger for a lager and go get a willamette bag from somewhere else for the JSAA.
I believe the alpha acid content has little to do with flavour. (I would assume flavour may be more of a result of Humulene levels?) I've tried many high alpha acid hops that have excellent flavour/aroma characteristics (Nelson Sauvin, Centennial, Amarillo, Simcoe are a few that spring to mind).
