The Brewmart Guy was confident to brew my bittering hops for only 30 min.

[Perennial Tears]

Since I just started up brewing again, this is my first brew in 3 years.

The guy at a different homebrew store that I've never been around before seems very knowlegeable and two different customers that came in to chat both won gold medals at the tournament here in san diego last month. So this circle of people seem to know their stuff.

Anyway, he helped me with a recipe for a stone clone and told me to boil the bittering hops for only 30 minutes. But every book I've read and and the past has always been 1 hour.

He confirmed that 30 would be fine.

5Gallon Batch 8lbs of Pale Extract
30 min of Steeping Grains

The Hops were:
Magnum
Cascade
Centennial

[Mill Rat]

I'd be inclined to try this recipe as presented. The LHBS guys won't usually steer you too far wrong, because a happy customer is a repeat customer, and an unhappy one isn't. If he's got some gold-medal types lurking around, that's a good sign, too. Early hop additions have lots of alpha acid utilization, and little or no flavor and aroma impact. Late additions (and dry hopping) make a huge flavor and aroma contribution, but have little AA utilization. The timing of each addition is a compromise between AA and flavor. The 30-minute addition gets most of the AA out of the hops, but doesn't completely lose the flavor, like a 60-minute would.

[essentrik1]

The recipe probably makes up for the loss in AA utilization from the shorter boil. You get alpha acids from any length of boil. You could get that amount of bitterness (theoreticaly) from a 1 min addition. You would just need a metric ass load of hops to make up for the super short boil.

[HogieWan]

I jsut bottled a small batch IPA (http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11467) that I only boiled 20 min.

Also - check out this chart (http://www.brewsupplies.com/hop_characteristics.htm). As you can see, even the aroma additions will add some bitterness.

[Perennial Tears]

Originally posted by HogieWan
I jsut bottled a small batch IPA (http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11467) that I only boiled 20 min.

Also - check out this chart (http://www.brewsupplies.com/hop_characteristics.htm). As you can see, even the aroma additions will add some bitterness.

Wow, that chart really opened my eyes, thanks!

Good thing I only bumped the boiling time to 40 minutes instead of the 60 minutes like the books said.

[HogieWan]

yeah - that chart cleared up my idea that a shorter boil would benefit aroma, so now I do 7 instead of 2

[danno]

YIKES is that a bad chart. I understand the point they're trying to get across, but where did they come up with that? and what are they trying to measure?

and, their advice below the chart is poorly enough written that someone could get hugely confused... "peak AROMA is about 7 minutes after the start of the boil", um, no, it isn't, it's 7 minutes REMAINING in the boil. (and that's giving them the benefit of the doubt on the 7 minute portion of the statement...)

PT, boiling times aren't just about hop utilization, boiling does other important stuff for brewing. if you use LME (liquid malt extract) you're OK with shorter boiling times, but if you use DME (dry malt extract) you want to boil for at least an hour...

[Mad Scientist]

Using Magnum and centinnial, yeah, I'd go with 30 minutes too.....

[Perennial Tears]

Originally posted by Boerne Brew
Using Magnum and centinnial, yeah, I'd go with 30 minutes too.....

Why do you say that?

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by Perennial Tears
Why do you say that?

Typically high alpha hops