Traditionally, a brewer adds a dose of hops to hot wort soon after it begins to boil. The wort then boils for 60-90 minutes for a handful of reasons, one of which is that a long boil squeezes more bitterness from hops than does a short one. In the past, when alpha acid levels (bitterness potential) were relatively low, an upfront bittering charge followed by a long boil was essential for balancing malt sweetness with hop bitterness.
When your local homebrew store doesn't stock high-alpha hops, you'll need to learn how to artificially inflate your IBUs to achieve the right level of bitterness. Here are two key ideas to keep in mind:
- Adding too much hops material can affect your yield by sucking too much wort out of the kettle and result in a vegetal aroma in your beer.
- Find the highest-alpha hops available and use that for bittering, in late hopping, use the same levels or increase them.
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