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What is Hop Bursting?

Can you put too many hops in a beer? How do you know when enough is enough? These questions brought us to some thoughts on hop bursting… so we shot a video.

Hop bursting is not a new technique per se, but for a couple dudes that tend to brew malt forward beers it was an interesting discussion for us. Over the last couple years we’ve certainly been exploring hoppy styles and hop usage a little more. John with his homegrown hop beers and me with some no chill IPA experiments (Falconer’s Flight hop blend). We’ve also been thinking about hops a little more during our discussion on water chemistry.

Hop bursting is the practice of adding a much larger than normal amount of hops at the end of the boil. I guess, in the strictest sense, it involves only adding hops at the end of the boil. The idea being that even though you only get a few IBUs at the end of the boil, by adding more hops you are getting enough IBUs to balance the beer. That big burst at the end preserved the hop oil content really giving a beer with tons of flavor and aroma.

We’ve never hop bursted before but is sounds interesting. Before we try it, we’ve wondered at what point is too much hops… Certainly just adding your normal 3-4 oz of hops at the end of the boil isn’t going to be enough, but is 12 oz or 16 oz too much???

I think it depends on your system and your brewing process. We all brew a little differently and we all have slightly different equipment set ups. (At least until the government starts subsidizing Blichmann kettles in every home.)

Therefore, the question of how much is too much need to be determined empirically.

If you are going to try hop bursting (or any recipe modification) you need to go into it expecting that plans may get you close to what you want but you’ll need to re-brew it again once you taste it.

It is part of the process of tuning in a recipe or technique. There is no direct answer sometimes; you need to determine how it works for you on your system.

I’d say the goal of a good hop bursting beer is to minimize vegetal off flavors, while maximizing every thing that it great about your hops. Keeping the bulk of that much hop debris out of the fermentor is likely key, not to mention reducing little hop bits in the glass as well.

We may experiment with some hop bursting in a few coming brews.

Do you have any experience with hop bursting?

How much hop material have you added to kettle before without it becoming a limiting factor in your process?

Where to the diminishing returns start?

Leave us a comment either here or on our YouTube channel.

BREW ON!

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4 Comments

  1. Lauren Warren

    I’ve always hated hopbursting. some commercial beers have done it ok. But the beers at brew pubs or homebrewed beers seem to try to get all of the bitterness at the end and that’s impossible the finished product doesn’t even taste like a beer. basically it take it taste like a green IPA. Most of them are borderline undrinkable and taste like s***

  2. Hi Lauren,

    Yeah, we hear you. There is a fine line between hoppy beers and “hop teas”. I decided to stick with my .75 ounces of Warrior hops addition with 60 minutes left to go in the boil. The bitterness should be there in my Down Under IPA.

  3. Lol, I just read my comment and realized how Douchebaggy it sounded. I apologize it was not my intent to discourage anyone from trying hopbursting. I myself have never tried it because of a beer I had a beer works one night. It was a heavily hopbursted IPA off their beer engine. I thought hell, this stuff has to be good. It was so god awful, I couldn’t even finish it. I COULDN’T EVEN FINISH THE BEER? That is correct first beer I couldn’t finish. So I kind of did it to myself, I have never hop bursted. I have grown quite found of Double dry hopping though. a really great way to layer different hop aromas in an IPA.

  4. No worries Lauren – I don’t think we took it the wrong way.

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