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Has anyone brewed without using any bittering hops? Are there any consequences to doing this?

Edit: I ask because I want to brew a style that's not normally very bitter (weizen), but give it a small citrusy kick, without adding to the bitterness. My thought was that I could just forgo the bittering hops, and throw in some Citra or Amarillo towards the end. The calculations say it will hit the desired IBU's, just wanted to know if there was anything else to be aware of.

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  • Do a google search for "hop burst", and you should find a few interesting things.
    – baka
    Feb 4, 2011 at 21:16

3 Answers 3

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Are you talking about not adding any hops at the beginning of the boil and relying on only late addition hops for bitterness? This is a technique I have read about and tasted a few examples and the results were pretty good. This works well in moderately bitter beers where you want a lot of hop flavor and aroma.

Basically you eliminate the 60 minute addition and start adding hops at about 30 minutes at increased levels to make up for the shorter boil time. There are no negative consequences that I know of.

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No matter when you add hops, you'll get some bitterness. That amount will decrease the later in the boil you add them. As Chris noted, you can add larger amounts of hops later in the boil (usually at 20 min. or less) to get bittering levels equivalent to the traditional 60 min. bittering addition, but the character of the bitterness will be different.

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I brewed a spin-off/inspired of Jamil Z.'s Evil Twin using his 20-10-0 addition schedule and it's still fermenting, but it smeels awesome and the fermenting wort tastes great. The hop aroma is VERY strong, which is fine for my beer, but may not be for yours.

If you chose your hops carefully and added them at 20 minutes only you would get a good bit of flavor without too much aroma, but there will still be some hop aroma. If you want hop aroma you could add @ 10 and 0 as well.

I think this will actually produce a pretty interesting beer.

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