I brewed a golden ale that was severely under hopped. I called my LBHS and the told me to make a hop tea to add to the keg:
I have hops on hand but no malt extract. What is the purpose of the malt extract? This beer is really malty as it is. Do you think just boiling hops and water will achieve the same end result?
I have never had success with that method. 1tbsp of extract is someone trying to sound smart. I am not a fan of trying to fix an existing brew. Drink, or blend it with a hoppy IPA. LEarn from it and either change your process or modify your recipe and rebrew it. Make it the next thing to brew. As homebrewers we bounce around a lot. But if you want to make better beer and be a better brewer take this as an opportunity to learn something. Brew it again, but better.
I have no idea what that amount of the extract would do for you. Presumably, not much. I don't think it would add much in the way of maltiness, either. It may be to "wake" the yeast back up, but I don't think that amount of it would even do that in any significant way.
I've never made a tea for this purpose, but I have dropped a couple of hop pellets in a tea infuser and poured boiling water on them, a 10 minute steep made a quite bitter tea. I think you'd be fine without the extract.
This will probably produce a different hop character from what you would get from having enough hops in the main boil. The proteins in the boiling wort coagulate around some of the hop solids and drop out of suspension, and the hop oils will coat yeast cells and flocculate out during fermentation. You'll probably want to pour several 2-3oz tasting glasses, carefully measure your hop tea, and add it to each glass in varying amounts. The amount to add to the full batch should scale linearly (i.e. 1 Tablespoon in a 12oz sample would equal around 50 Tablespoons for a 5 gallon batch).
