Mash Hopping

[TheZel66]

I've been reading several articles about mash hopping; ie, putting your flavor/aroma hops in your mash. People swear that if you put around 1.5x the amount of hops that you normally use for flavor/aroma/dry hopping in your mash, you can get amazing hop flavor and aroma in the beer. None of these hops contribute to bittering, so you still need to use bittering hops and the beginning of the boil.

OK, none of this makes sense according to what I've read about hops, and people admit that, but they say it works. I was going to try this with an ESB recipe to see if it does work.

I wanted to know if anyone has tried this before, and how it turned out.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I have not but willing to try too

 

[MrBIP]

I did this once, not sure why now, in mash and FWH (it's the beer on profile pic).
Can't say for sure that it is any different than "normal" hopping though since that, so far, is the only time I made it... but, can say that it was "hoppy" without being specifically bitter, But I used a lot of late additions also and very little in bittering. It turned out well, I do plan to brew it again. I guess the only way to really tell would be make something twice with different hop plan and see how they compare.

 

[Krimbos]

A guy at my LHBS said that the theory is that hop oils react with the hot break, affecting bitterness.

Sounds good to me. Pass me another beer....

 

[LevanteJim]

I do this for my DIPA and while I can't provide a quantitative analysis, I can tell you that in combination with FWH in the same recipe, the results were incredible. Now, I FWH everything, so the only difference I can tell you between my other IPA batches and one was that I mash hopped.

Now chemically, any oils extracted in the mash are not going to contribute bitterness, flavor or aroma. They'll simply get boiled off. What could be happening is that the hops are adding acidity to reduce the mash pH and thus get you in a better pH range.