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Author Topic: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!  (Read 3942 times)

Offline brulosopher

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2016, 01:40:39 pm »

Thanks for another great xBmt, Marshall! When I do batches of single-hop trials, I definitely notice a difference in the quality of bitterness between the different hops. It would be interesting to go back to some of my tasting notes and see if the CoH levels line up with my experience.

I wonder if this has any bearing on why beers with no bittering addition (i.e., all IBU's from the whirlpool) seem to have a smoother bitterness than those with a traditional 60-minute addition. It could be just hop choice coming into play, but maybe less iso-CoH is produced by that technique. Every time I see one of these experiments it makes me wish I had a GC/MS in my garage to help answer the myriad of other questions it seems to lead to.

Given the narrow margin of significance on this one, I'd say this would be a good candidate for an IGOR followup, to see if a bigger sample size will result in a clearer conclusion.

I so hope D&D have their IGORs redo this one! I definitely plan to continue playing with it. I only wish there was a better way to get differing CoH levels without using different hops. Hmm.

Maybe all 3 of us should put our heads together and see if there's a better way to do this.
I wish I could find it, but someone a couple weeks ago emailed me a link to purchase actual CoH... or something like that. I feel like that's really the best way to get where we want to go. Heads together, indeed!

Offline denny

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2016, 01:44:08 pm »
Maybe all 3 of us should put our heads together and see if there's a better way to do this.

I sense an inevitable establishment of either a merger or a mutual respect society of some sort.

Another part of me wishes James Spencer and/or Chris Colby would also jump on board somewheres.  It would be like a non-holy non-trinity at that point... mega nerdy pragmatic awesomeness... jolly good and which no one could deny.

We've already got the mutual respect society.  That's why we ask Marshall to come on the podcasts to comment on our experiments.
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Offline dmtaylor

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2016, 01:48:31 pm »
I'll drink to that.  :)
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Offline erockrph

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2016, 08:30:38 pm »
My thought is that repeat testing should use a variety of hops that have high and low cohumulone levels, this way a trend would tend to point towards cohumulone as the likely difference. If you use the same two hops repeatedly, then the results could be from some other difference between the two.

I think you'd want enough bitterness to be able to detect a difference if there is one, but otherwise as small of a hop addition as possible to minimize other flavor contributions. In other words, high alpha but low oil content would be the ideal hop selection for this.

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Offline charles1968

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #19 on: March 08, 2016, 01:47:48 am »
The Rigby paper referenced in the Brulosophy article says cohumulone is isomerized at a faster rate than humulone, so the difference might simply be that high cohumulone hops end up giving a higher final IBU level, even if AA levels start the same.

Offline ynotbrusum

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #20 on: March 08, 2016, 05:39:22 am »
So much for my usual thoughts that a bittering addition is a bittering addition is a bittering addition (and yes, I use Magnum for most bittering additions - except IPA's where I'll wander to the west side of the aisle).

Keep up the good work, though.  I'm not lost yet - but we are getting close to where my "flat earth-like" theory regarding hops runs out....
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Offline Steve Ruch

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Re: Bittering Hops: High vs. Low Cohumulone | exBEERiment Results!
« Reply #21 on: March 08, 2016, 03:57:11 pm »
When people tell me they use Magnum for those, I kinda wonder why.

Me too. If not chinook, simcoe or apollo are good choices.
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