Hop Bursting (Part 2, How the Brewers Do It)

This is a follow up post.  To read the first part go here.

Yesterday we discussed the newly en vogue technique dubbed "hop bursting," wherein a brewer uses very few early-addition hops (or none).  Instead, she dumps in loads and loads of late-addition hops, partly to eke out a few IBUs, and partly to saturate the beer in juicy aromas and flavors.  All well and good, but as a practical matter, how does one do it?

First Wort and Mash Hopping
I turned first to Ben Edmunds, who made three different versions this winter (including possibly the first titular "hop burst" beer).  He and the Breakside brewers approached it in a quasi-scientific way, keeping several of the variables constant (malts and hops differed, but the water, IBUs, and ABV were identical).  I would expect nothing less of them.  In all cases, they used either a first wort hop or mash hop addition.  (Ben observed, correctly, that "I imagine there are some folks who think that First Wort or Mash hopping would knock these out of the 'hop bursted' category."  No doubt they will--but as I think we'll see, that is almost certain to become standard at the commercial level.)  In mash hopping, you put the hops in with the mash where they don't get to boiling temperatures and don't go on to the kettle.  In first-wort hopping, you throw the hops in while the beer is coming over from the lauter and then heating up to a boil--it's standard in the Czech Republic.  In both cases, breweries believe the hopping is gentler and milder.

Here are the three different hop schedules they tried:

1) First wort Hop, 15 min addtn, 5 min addtn, whirlpool addtn, 2 x Dry Hop
2) Mash hop, whirlpool addtn, 2 x dry hop
3) Mash Hop, 20 min addtn, whirlpool addtn, fermenter hop, dry hop

Their conclusions?

1. Two dry hops (or a fermenter hop and a dry hop) create aromas that are almost never achieved with a single dry hop, even if the single dry hop quantity is doubled.
2.  Mash hops seem to provide more residual hop flavor than first wort hops; hop utilization (and bitterness) from first wort hopping is significantly higher than from mash hopping.
3. Varietal and quantity of hops still seem to be more important than any particular sequence of late kettle addition hops.
4. All of these beers had a danker, "fresher hop" flavor than beers where we used more classic "flavor additions" at 30 mins.

"Different" Bitterness
As you can see, Ben was finding different qualities in the flavors and aromas depending on how the hops were used.  One of the theories about hop bursting is that it provides a "softer" bitterness.  There are so many different elements that go into our perception of hoppiness that I'm skeptical of this claim.  Zach Beckwith at Three Creeks in Bend Sisters is, too.  His comment:

At Three Creeks we have been playing with hop bursting in a number of beers over the last 5-6 months.  In my experience the notion that eliminating the bittering charge creates a "softer" bitterness is unfounded; more accurately I would call it a "different" bitterness, more of a late hitting, lingering bitterness.  I attribute that to the use of massive quantities of the new school hop varieties that more often than not have alpha acid values at 10%+.  My two cents is that at least with our beers we've had the best results with our Hodag CDA where a maltier backbone seems to minimize that "different" bitterness.  I have incorporated a "modified" hop bursting in our Raptor Rye IPA with great results, simply reducing the bittering charge.  I would also like to mention that Stone may not have invented hop bursting but Mitch Steele has popularized it recently with his IPA book and a recent Zymurgy article on the subject.  A key component Steele points to is using a great number of varieties as well as quantities of late hops.

If you didn't read that whole paragraph carefully, let me draw your eye to the last sentence, which echoes Ben's final point about varieties.


Foam Stability
Finally, I'd like to give the last word to Mitch Steele, Stone's brewmaster.  In comments on the original Facebook post, he acknowledged Stone's inspiration for Go To IPA. 

Hop Bursting is a term and process that homebrewers developed a few years ago. We take much inspiration from homebrewing, many of us at Stone are/have been homebrewers. And lots of commercial brewers use this technique--though they may not call it that. I think for certain beers, it really works.

We had a further private exchange, and I asked whether there were any bittering hops in Go To and he mentioned a small amount of first wort hops.  These aren't used so much for bittering, though, as to keep foam down in the kettle.  As I was doing my Googling, I found this reference several times.  It may well be that homebrewers can get away with no early hops, but on a commercial scale, this may be a problem.  Since the definition is still forming, I'd suggest being a little loose about whether or not mash, first-wort, or even standard bittering hops disqualify a beer from being called "hop burst."  The goal should be to produce a sensory effect, not adhere to an arbitrary standard.  In other words, the proof is in the mouth, not the recipe.

(And if you'll forgive me one parenthetical indulgence, I'll add my own two cents.  Based on my own experience with my pale, mash hopping seems to accentuate that saturated quality of flavor the most, but it's pretty easy to overshoot it and end up with a beer that tastes like orange juice.  I do like a little touch of bittering stiffness in there to round things out.  My preference is mash hop plus a dash of bittering hops, then come in strong at 20 minutes.  I will try Ben's dual dry-hop this year.  Please feel free to share your own experiences in comments.)

Thanks all--I don't know about you, but I am a smarter man today than when I started the week.

Introducing "Hop Bursting" (Part 1, History)

(See also Part Two, how the brewers do it.)

I owe Stone Brewing an apology.  Last week the brewery sent out a press release to go with its new release called Go To IPA.  It included a passage that seemed like PR babble to me, with a piece of jargon added on top like a cherry:

"To achieve these glorious hop qualities and still maintain a low ABV, a technique called 'hop bursting' was implemented. This contemporary approach involves infusion of a massive amount of hops during the final phase of the brewing process to coax out the robust flavors and aromas of the hops."

Since there's nothing new about adding a massive amounts of late hops (it is, indeed, almost obligatory in 2014), the idea that this was something contemporary or that it needed a new name seemed like PR gloss. I (unwisely) mocked Stone for trying to drum up excitement over a standard practice (but wisely did it only on Facebook).  In short order, hive mind tipped me off that the term "hop bursting" didn't originate with Stone and had a real if elusive definition.

I did a bit of Googling.  It turns out that hop bursting is not the act of merely adding a lot of late-addition hops--it's only adding late addition hops.  No bittering hops at all.  It's a homebrewing technique that apparently dates back about a decade.  The earliest reference I can find is Jamil Zainasheff, who adds this introduction to an article he wrote back in '05 for Zymurgy: "I hadn't heard of what people call 'hop bursting' at that time or I would have mentioned it in the article. In this article I describe the process of massive late hopping (or hop bursting) and it includes a great recipe called Evil Twin." I consulted Stan Hieronymus's For the Love of Hops and he confirms that it bubbled up from the homebrew-o-sphere.  

Homebrewers mainly go the full monty, adding no hops to the beer until about the last 20 minutes of the boil.  Because it takes a long time for hops to fully isomerize and add bitterness, the homebrewers add a truckload of late-addition hops in recompense.  One theory holds that these later hops impart a softer bitterness, IBU for IBU.  No one has done a lick of research though, and that theory has the aroma of rumor to me.  I think it's more likely that it tastes softer because there's less real bitterness. 

But is it really a new technique?  To this, I think we may have no quick answer, though I'll share an anecdote by way of hypothesis.  Unbeknownst to myself, I have apparently been hop bursting for a few years.  It's the hallmark of my long-term project to create the perfect pale ale.  The first time I tried it, I used a small sprinkling of mash hops, then came in hard at 20 minutes.  I've experimented by first-wort hopping and using a wee bitter charge, but the 20 minute mega-load is a standard.  Did I invent hop bursting?

I have been contacting a few breweries (more on what they report tomorrow) and Ben Edmunds, who recently made some hop-burst beers, referred me to Barley Brown's, where he said the technique has been in use for awhile.  Tyler Brown's response to my inquiry was instructive:

"To be honest, I don't recall ever hearing the term "Hop Bursting" until just recently.  After looking it up... it resembles some of the techniques we've been doing for years. I once kicked around the thought of doing a "No IBU Ale" where we added hops to the mash, none in the kettle or whirlpool, and then a ton of dry hops. In theory it would be a Zero IBU beer."

"To answer some of your question, a beer we brew: Turmoil, uses half of it's hop bill in dry hop, and out of the the entire hop bill, less than 10% is used early in the kettle. We've been brewing Turmoil for 10 years as of January."

So there you go.  If I thought of this technique myself and Barley Brown's thought of it themselves, what's the likelihood that it really only dates back a decade?  Like so many practices in the art of brewing, one should always be suspicious of claims of innovation.  My guess is that this has been done from time to time across the millennia.  I mean, German brewers used to add chimney soot to beer, so how would this have escaped their notice?

Nevertheless, it's obviously more than PR gloss.  The IPA era extends back about twenty years, and over that period, breweries have gone from hyper-bitter beers to hyper-juicy beers, shifting the moment they added the hops from earlier to later.  Hop bursting describes a technique that is the ultimate terminus of that trend, when no (or very few) early hops are used.  It's a useful term, and I suspect it describes a technique that will come into regular use in the coming years.

In Part 2 tomorrow, I'll describe some of the ways breweries are implementing hop bursting in their beers.