Cubing question

[AidanMatthews]

Hey guys,

i have another question for those that cube.

The idea is that you shorten the length of time by 15 - 20 minutes for your bittering adition so 60minute becomes 45/40 minutes.
The reason is because the liquid stays hot enough post boil to continue extracting the alpha acids from the hops which makes it more bitter.
Hence the balance.

My Question:
What if you use a hop sock?
Your taking most of the hops out of the wort and so does it still continue to extract the bitterness post boil.

My next beer is going to be a simple Bitter Draught for summer.... so i just need a single adition of POR.
My last beer was a Boags draught clone and it came out not as bitter as i wanted it... and so im wondering if i should ditch the hop sock and try
or use the hop sock and boil for 60 minutes then remove hop sock.

[squirt in the turns]

Hi Aidan,

The 20 minute rule has served me well, so far. My understanding is that the alpha acids disolve quite readily in hot wort, and will continue to isomerise at high temperatures, regardless of the presence of the solid vegetable matter that originally contained them. Therefore the use of a hop sock should make little difference, unless it's too small, and doesn't allow the hops to move freely enough for their oils to be fully disolved.

Most no chillers try to keep kettle trub out of the cube, and still experience extra bitterness in spite of the lack of hop matter in the cube. After turning off the heat, I wait a couple of minutes for convection currents to subside, then whirlpool for a couple of minutes and leave it for about 10 mins for the gunk to settle in the middle of the kettle. A brewer that chills would probably whirlpool and let it settle for much longer, but I find that my method allows an acceptably small amount of gunk to make it into the fermenter.

As to why your Boags clone wasn't bitter enough: apart from my comment above about hop sock size, another thing that comes to mind is the age of the hops. Beersmith has a tool for calculating the loss of alpha acids over time, or you can try an online calculator like this one.

[AidanMatthews]

Next question.....

How do you apply FWH to cubing schedual.....

[squirt in the turns]

I asked this question recently in another thread and got a reply from emnpaul, pointing out that hop utilisation drops off the longer the hops are in the boil.

I was doing a 90 min boil, so adding 20 mins to the FWH additions in beersmith made so little difference as to seem irrelevant. In a 60 minute boil the extra utilisation would be greater, but not by that much.

It seems logical to assume that the alpha acids from FHW would continue to isomerise in the cube like any other type of hop addition. However, I would say that you'd need a sensitive or trained palate to pick the difference between a beer that had been made with compensation for this, and one that hadn't.