FWH, opinions and such

I do it routinely with my bittering hops. Not because I'm sold on the technique, but just because I have a minute, so I throw them in. A couple of the more seasoned members of my brew club swear by it, which seems to add some credibility, at least for me. I'm not sufficiently intrigued to pay that close attention to what it does - my beers all taste pretty much as expected, so it doesn't seem to hurt the bitterness, which is all I'm shooting for at that point. If it affects the flavor or the aroma, it's likely subtle.

That's my take on it.

 

I do it some of the time, mainly just for Pales and IPA's obviously..

Any hop works, I've found. I'm sure someone will come in and claim you need to use lower AA hops or something like that for FWH because of the levels of certain oils, and such.

Use what you like.. Some claim it's a 20min addition in terms of bitterness, I don't really see it that way other than maybe to soothe your soul for calculating your IBU's, but it does lend a smoother bitterness, I just don't think that smooth, equals less in terms of actual bitterness like some want to believe.

I just use whatever I planned to hit at 60 or 90.. Chinook is nice, and Columbus is good.. Magnum is just as well.. I used Citra just this past weekend on my Zombie Dust.

 

I try to do FWH as often as possible. I have found the bitterness to be smoother with more lingering flavor/aroma making it into the final beer. My understanding is to treat the addition the same as a 20 minute "normal" hop addition in terms of the bitterness that it supplies to the beer (if you are using some software/application).

My next stop is hop stand to see what more/extra I can get from it in a hoppy beer.

 

I think you've got it reversed... some claim its like a 20 minute addition in terms of flavor (a la Gordon Strong).

Lab tested FWH beers have a higher IBU level than an equivalent addition at the start of the boil (e.g. a 90 minute addition will have less IBU than a FWH beer used in a 90 minute boil).

The alpha acid level doesn't matter, it'll work regardless of alpha acid percentage. You may get different perceptions of bitterness depending on cohumulone levels, but thats another can of worms.

FWH is really a way to make sure you don't forget your bittering addition, and to get the maximal IBUs (Just talking straight up lab determined IBUs, not perceived bitterness) from your hop addition.

Some will claim you get hop flavor from it, but in personal experience (I FWH all of my beers) you get very little in flavor, unless you're using a hop that is very pungent and strong. For example I've used Apollo as a FWH (only addition in beer) and have been able to pick up its character in the finished beer, whereas with almost every other hop I've used (all my beers that don't feature hops as a prominent character are FWH only) doesn't come through at all in the flavor department.

One other, preemptive thing, I'm sure some asshat will cite the infamous German paper on FWH and claim FWH provides more flavor and aroma because a tasting panel found the FWH beers to be "more pleasing", so for that person, if you look at the actual GC/LC-MS measurements of the hop aroma component profile of the beers in that paper, the non-FWH beers actually have higher levels of hop aroma compounds and essential oils, e.g. the shit that actually matters for aroma and flavor.

 

The adjectives used in that study to describe the hop flavor/aroma of the FWHed beers were "unobtrusive" and "harmonious", and somehow people have taken that to mean that FWHing provides increased hope aroma/flavor. Furthermore, as you've stated, chemical analysis of the FWHed beers shows decreased aromatic compounds (and increased IBUs) when compared to the control beers. There seems to be a disconnect, IMO, between both the objective and subjective evidence provided in that study, and what homebrewers claim FWHing provides.

FWIW, FWHing was developed by German brewers as a way to increase bittering utilization.

 

Boy, I am reticent to post on this particular thread since things got very ‘interesting’ on the previous thread entitled “FWH in an IPA”.

To demonstrate that I lack sense, I will post below what I posted in the previous thread:

“Gordon Strong claims "However I do find a huge hop flavor contribution from FWH. The flavor I get is higher than an equivalent 20 minute addition."

Greg Koch claims "slight increases in IBU, Flavor and aroma" from FWH.

Matt Brynildson states: “First Wort Hopping is a method to deliver additional hop flavor complexity to beer.

Al Korzonas states: My experience with first wort hopping is that it contributes less bitterness than hops added after the boil has started, adds a small hop aroma and an incredible amount of hop flavor.”

Now, it is important that everybody read this:

· I personally have never used FWH in my homebrewing so I have zero personal opinion on this matter

· If there is disagreement with any of the above quotes, they should be directed to Gordon Strong, Greg Koch, or whoever.

Cheers!

 

Nice use of appeal to authority.

"Authority A says blank, therefore blank is true, if you disagree then take it up with A, not me."

Did I sum that up well enough?

 

And he is back.

 

I tried a beer with a large does of FWH as the only hop addition in boil, then split it so one side got dry hopped only and the other no additional treatment. This was back in day when FWH & Rock Bottom's experiment were "rewriting" how we use hops. I can say unequivocally that among the panel, that no tasters got really any perceptible hop flavor or aroma when tasted against bud light for the beer with FWH only. Iirc I used chinook in that beer.

 

I've been using FWH on some beers. I'm not totally convinced, still experimenting.

One potential negative for me, at least so far, is that it is more difficult to estimate bitterness when formulating a recipe than more traditional boil additions. I think most people agree that we get less perceived bitterness out of a FWH addition than we get from an equal hop addition at the beginning of the boil? But how much less? I have to admit I don't have a clear handle on that, but maybe that'll come as I continue to tinker with it.

Also: I can't help but wonder, if FWH is in fact the best way to utilize bittering hops, why did people start waiting until the beginning of the boil to add them? Seems obvious they wouldn't. Make of that what you will.

 

sounds like an argument against experimentation and innovation. One can only imagine a naysayer opining, centuries ago, 'If adding this strange, odiferous weed (hops) to beer would improve its flavor and shelf life, why haven't they been adding them for thousands of years?' Seems obvious they would have. Make of that what you will.

 

See, thats the issue I have.. Where or how do you accurately calculate it?

I've always assumed and set up my FWH on Beersmith to just default to whatever length of boil I have going. I recently changed it to assume that it was a 20min addition when I did a ZD clone that I saw where someone said to calculate it as 20min worth of bitterness.

I think it's horse shit, as then your IBU's are theoretically what you perceive, not calculated.

Then again, I also think we're not exact anyways, so it's all a ballpark guess.

 

I’m pretty sure that whenever somebody proposed adding hops to beer for the first time, that’s probably the exact reaction he got. But then people tasted the beer, and it was good. And most people agreed hops were better than spruce branches or whatever they’d been using, and over the course of a relatively short period of time hops became the standard bittering agent for pretty much everybody who could get them. Usually, when somebody comes up with a way to make better beer, word gets around pretty fast.
So I’m asking: why didn’t a similar process occur with FWH? Anybody got an answer?
One possibility would be that throughout hundreds of years of hop-based bittering, nobody ever thought of it. That seems unlikely.
So assuming it was tried, why didn’t it become standard practice? Especially if it really did offer better utilization and smoother hop flavor? That just doesn’t make sense.

 

Define a 'relatively short period of time' for a 5,000+ year old activity without an internet. Particularly in the shadow of Reinheitsgebot, CAMRA, and likely countless other roadblocks to change something that had served us well for thousands of years. My point is, FWH is a new, somewhat controversial practice with seemingly dubious benefit for some, and with seemingly stellar results for others. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those who say it's ineffective have never tried it, basing their opinion solely on conventional wisdom ("we know everything there is to know about extracting bitterness, therefore, you're wasting your time"). Hops were 'discovered' because someone dared to break with tradition. It likely took years, perhaps hundreds of years before their currently known properties were quantified and anything resembling a hop schedule was even conceived, let alone tweaked to maximize bitterness, flavor, and aroma (hardly an intuitive process). Maybe we simply haven't yet figured out how to effectively exploit the benefits of FWH. Maybe our grandchildren will eventually scratch the surface.

And maybe it's a bunch of hooey.

 

For anyone who wants to test whether FWH provides a bitterness level equal to a 20 minute addition, here's an experiment... Take a recipe that has only a 60 minute addition and brew it. Now brew it again, but replace the 60 minute addition with a FWH, with 165% the amount of hops. Per the Tinseth calcs, if FWH = 20 minutes, these beers should have the same bitterness.

I won't be doing this myself. I already have too much in the backlog.

 

If you like the activity, might I suggest the next thread be.. "Glass or Plastic?"

 

I think changing a 20 minute addition to FWH (within a typical multi addition recipe) would not be the cleanest way to go, because you'd still have other hop additions, whose bitterness contributions could overwhelm the senses. The 20 minute/FWH additions' signals could be lost in the other additions' noise. I think the way to go is to go big, with single additions.