The Making of a Fresh Hop Ale

Continuing with the discussion of fresh hops, and delving into the archives again, here are excerpts from a connected pair of posts from 2013. I'm reposting them because there continues to exist a kind of fresh-hop fundamentalism in which the only "authentic" fresh hop beers are the ones made exclusively with fresh hops. There's a reason this is ill-advised; when used to bitter a beer, fresh hops very often add a note of boiled vegetables (since that's what they are) and can result in a note of decay, like compost. If you want the fullness of that fresh hop flavor and aroma, you need to use to use conventional hops to bitter a beer. From there, theories vary. Read on for more.

A Crystal Gayle Goschie, poured yesterday (Sept 29).

I inquired with a group of brewers that really seem to reliably produce excellent fresh hop beers to see what they had to say.  What were their methods?  My working theory is that using fresh hops throughout the boil--once seen as the only "true" method--added too much vegetable matter and created the compost note.  I couched my question from that perspective and found some agreement.  Here's Laurelwood's Vasilios Gletsos:

"When I moved to Mactarnahan's/Pyramid/PBCo, I didn't have the flexibility to use fresh hops on the hot side [the kettle], so I devised a plan to add them in secondary/conditioning tanks. We did this as whole flower breweries (Deschutes or Sierra Nevada before torpedo) do: stuffed into mesh bags and tied them to the bottom of the vessel (in our case, since we didn't have tank hooks, we cleaned up heavy chunks of stainless and tied then to that). This gave the best, "Fresh Squeezed" flavor I have ever gotten from fresh hops. A beautiful mix of peach fruit cup with a touch of tea, and an unparalleled horticultural mouthfeel (if that makes sense)."

But wait--not so fast!  I also spoke to one of those "whole flower" breweries, Deschutes.  (Most breweries, especially larger ones, use pellets, which are more compact.)  Brewer Cam O'Connor does use them on the "hot side," though only very late, for some of their fresh hop beers:

"This hop addition happens in the hot wort, usually in the kettle or in the hopback, where wort is transferred onto the hops. The impact we are looking for here is a nice juicy in-your-face hop aroma and flavor without a lot of vegetative flavors. Hop Trip and Chasin freshies are both made using the hot side hop additions." 

But he agreed that "cold-side" fresh hopping has its place, as well.

"This method is very similar to traditional dry hopping except you are using fresh/wet hops to dry hop the beer in the bright beer tank. The impact from this method is usually potent in aroma and flavor and can pick up some of the vegetative qualities from the fresh hop. We make some of the pub beers using this method. It is very difficult to do on a large scale so the pubs work very well. Fresh Hop Mirror Pond is made using this method." 

You note that Cam mentioned picking up a "vegitative note" even in the bright tank? Vasili agreed and offered a recommendation:

"Don't leave it on the hops too long (48-72 hours seems good) before racking it off, which limits contact with the vegetal matter and may be contributing to the [unpleasant] flavors."

Writing for Gigantic, Van Havig added a point I'd never considered--oil content.

I think it really all lies in hop choice. The higher oil hops seem to make better fresh hop beers.  This makes intuitive sense, of course. But it really is the case that you have to start with the right raw materials. After that, I think boiling is a bad idea. It extracts things you don't want, and potentially drives off oil.  So late additions - hop back generally - is where it's at. When we make them, we add a little bit of a known Bittering hop at the start of boil, and then ALL of the wet hops go in the hop back.  We use a lot - 200+ lbs for 15 BBLs. If we need to "touch it up" with dry hops, we use a light hand (1/4 lb / bbl or so)."

Another factor Double Mountain's Matt Swihart points out is how dangerously perishable fresh hops are. 

I think it is those situations where the stinky, vegetative, musty aromas pop up in some wet hop beers. From my perspective, you simply can’t use non-dried hops more than 12-24 hours after picking, unless you can spread them out in a cooler, and keep ‘em cold.

One of main issues, he points out, resonates with Van's point about oil content:

Unfortunately the high moisture and oil content at harvest also starts to breakdown and physically compost once the vine is cut.

Which suggests that the sooner they get into the wort/beer, the better.  (This gives Oregon brewers a real advantage--Portland-area breweries are 45 minutes from the hop fields.)  I'll have a full guest post from Matt tomorrow that gives one of the best descriptions of the care and tending of fresh hops I've ever read.

As with all things brewing, there are different methods and approaches.  Matt recommends using traditional kilned hops in the conditioning tank along with wet hops, while Vasili cautions against it.  (For Matt, the combo is "pleasing" while to Vasili it's "distracting.")  Your experiences may vary.  A consensus seems to be forming around adding the hops later rather than earlier.  In addition, use the freshest possible fresh hops and hops with high oil content. 

After that?  Probably pray to Ninkasi that the crop was good and the oils rich and vibrant.  There's a certain bit of alchemy in the process that makes fresh hop beers a bit of a mystery. 

Wait, There's Corn Sugar in My IPA??

When I posted a link on Facebook to the hop-degradation piece I did earlier this week, Pete Dunlop wrote:

No mention of the corn sugar, huh? Hmmm.

And then a few minutes later, in response to another question...

I don't have an objection to this post or to the use of dextrose. I just think it's important for people to understand how dextrose is being used in their fancy IPAs. I've discussed it with Jeff. I'm baiting him to write about it.

Well, consider me baited, Pete. 

____________

Sugar is Kosher

It turns out using sugar is a somewhat under-discussed widespread practice, so let's discuss it. I think we should begin with the obvious question: who cares? The reason Pete even brought it up is because the use of sugar in beer was originally and ignorantly tarnished by craft brewers who considered its use purely a way to save money, with the added bonus of making the beer taste cheap and thin. In fact, sugar is a big part of the brewing traditions in Belgium and Britain, and it's used to enhance those beers. 

It does a few things. Because sugar is easily digestible by yeast, it thins a beer and adds crispness. This is a huge benefit in stronger Belgian ales. If you brew an all-barley beer to eight or ten percent strength, it will be both heavy and sweet. There are just too many unfermentable sugars in barley to get really attenuated beer. Let's take Duvel at not-quite random. It's a burly 8.5% beer, but it is incredibly lithe and drinkable. In fact, the name is a reference to that ease of drinking; like a Devil, it coaxes you into over-indulgence. Brewers at Duvel do a multi-step mash to get the most fermentable wort possible, but they also add sugar, perhaps 15%, and this pushes the beer to a finishing gravity of 1.5 Plato (1.006), which is astonishing. A regular pale ale will finish out at 3 Plato (twice as sweet), and an all-grain 8.5% stout might finish at 5 Plato--more than three times as sweet, and with a dense body. 

In British ales, sugar does something like the opposite--it allows very light ales to express their ingredients cleanly and clearly. Since a cask bitter or mild is made with so little malt (these beers are in the 3-4% range), they can't pack much flavor punch. By adding sugar, it lifts them up and exposes them a bit more. Hops are always perceived as stronger in thinner beers--it's why Belgian ales so rarely have much hoppiness--and in cask ales, that means those lovely East Kent Goldings really pop.

Sugar can even add its own flavor component. British brewers use a form called "invert sugar," where the sucrose molecule has been cleaved into glucose and fructose—two highly-fermentable forms of the sugar molecule. In Britain, invert sugar comes in a range of colors and can, in beers like stouts and milds, add color along with high fermentability. I interviewed local homebrewer Bill Schneller for my forthcoming book, because he's a big fan of invert. He told me, "You just can’t get the flavors of invert from crystal malts. [Invert gives you] richer color, different dried fruit flavors than crystal alone, plus a drier, easier-drinking beer than if you use all crystal malt. It adds complexity and flavors you just can’t get anywhere else."

What's Dextrose?
There are lots of sugars out there, and they'll all work in a beer--sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose (of course), and so on. Some of them are disaccharides like sucrose and maltose, composed of two monosaccharide molecules (like fructose and glucose). Dextrose is a starch-derived monosaccharide that comes from, ta-da!--corn. It's chemically extremely close to glucose. 

We have this second bias, probably a good one, against corn sugar. Even the phrase "corn sugar" can be easily turned into an epithet. But the use of corn in beer is not only old and completely respectable (I commend you now to Stan Hieronymus' forthcoming Brewing Local, which will fully and permanently exonerate our only native grain), but it's something even the Belgians do. Indeed, in many breweries you'll find this little side-vessel that you might mistake for use in decoction, but is in fact called a cereal cooker because it mashes corn. No less than Rodenbach does this. You want to tell Rudi Ghequire his beer uses cheap additives? Good luck with that. 

Dextrose is the most common sugar used in modern IPAs (I think), but I wouldn't bet even a nickel that it's the only sugar. Either way, it's fine.

Sugary IPAs
Okay, so now we come to the point of all this: do American brewers regularly dump corn sugar into your IPAs? You bet they do, and good thing. This is no secret. When I interviewed Vinnie Cilurzo for The Beer Bible, he readily described why he used sugar in the grist of Pliny the Elder when he first made it 13 years ago:

“If you want to know the difference between it and a barley wine, it’s got 3.5-4% crystal malt in it.  So having a low level of crystal malt you really let the hops come through.  They’re not being muddled by the caramel character of the crystal malt.  Also, we’re using a lot of sugars in the fermentables, dextrose sugar, so it’s drying the beer out and giving the beer a nice light, dry body.  Super crisp, but really dry yet really bitter.  And like you said the malt just lays the foundation and it’s just there to keep the hops in check without being sweet, malty, biscuity.  It’s a real simple malt bill and the hops are the shining star in that beer.”

That is about as clear a description of why brewers do this. When you're making an American IPA and you want a bit of caramel malt for sweetness, which can inflect hop flavor, you don't want to add unnecessary body. That's especially true if you're getting up there around 7% or more, when it's impossible to keep the sweetness and body at bay without sugar. The whole thing about American IPAs is that they're a vehicle for all the flavors and aromas of hops. Everything else--water, yeast, and malt--is there just to serve the hops. Sugar is invaluable, just as it is in strong Belgian ales, in this regard. 

So enjoy your IPA and know that it is in very good beer company. Corn sugar's fine!