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Hop Tea

MikeinRH

Grandmaster Brewer
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Have any of you guys tried making a "hop tea" for your hop additions instead of tossing pellets into the boil? Reason I ask is that when running a 10 gallon batch through a chill plate, there's a tendency to clog up the works and bring the whole process to a standstill.  At a minimum, I'm going back to packing hops into a muslin bag ... but I've been wondering if there is any chemical downside to boiling and filtering pellets to create a "tea" in order to eliminate hob debris and minimize the stuff that gets passed through the chill plate. Even if I have to increase the ounces of pellets to achieve the desired IBU's, I'm thinking it might be worth a try. Will probably experiment with a 5-gallon batch.
 
Haven't tried it. Everything I've read and heard from professional Brewers says it should not work. What I've read is that when the boil ph is about 5.8 bad flavors Wil be extracted from the hops. Sean o Sullivan from 21a has directly said they taste nasty.  I'm pretty sure that Charlie bamforth has said the same thing on one the the tbn water/ph shows.

Hence, I always take a preboil ph reading and adjust accordingly.  But, managing sparge ph usually takes care of that.
 
So Tom, anything but 5.8 works or rather anything lower I should probably guess?



I'd like to make up some hop teas for experimenting. Like make up a beer with just bittering hops and then mix some carbonated teas 30,5 ,0 minute boil of different hops to find a good profile.


 
Yeah sorry that should have been "above 5.8"  instead of "about" 

Lower ph values are better. Since the mash and first runnings are around 5.2, and the sparge should not rise about 6.0 this usually takes care of itself.
 
yeah ... I pretty much guessed that. I think I'll just go back to the muslin bag technique. The only reason why I gave up on that in the first place is because I wasn't getting any benefit from hop additions. As a matter of fact, I think it was Tom who suggested that I send my water to a lab for testing. By far the best move I've ever made. It wasn't the hop bags that was preventing the IBU contribution ... it was the water. I'm excited about trying this for a 10-gallon batch.
 
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