Adding the Hops

There are different types of hops available to the homebrewer. Whole leaf hops, Hops plugs and pellet hops. Here is a half ounce hop plug being put into a hop sack. The hop sack is simply a nylon panty hose, cleaned and cut to 6" lengths. They hold up very nicely in the boiling wort and help with straining the hops from the wort when we use the CF (counter-flow) chiller later on. If you use hops sacks, you should also bump up your hops by about 10% due to a slight loss of utilization.

Here is the first hops addition at 60 minutes. These happen to be an ounce of Pride of Wringwood Pellet hops with a high alpha rating, around 10%. This will result in the bitterness of the hops being extracted into the beer. The higher the alpha % the higher the bitterness of the hops. Hops are generally referred to as bittering (60-30 minutes), Flavoring (30-10 minutes) and aroma (10-0 minutes). Where minutes refers to how many minutes are LEFT in the boil.