It's a beautiful thing to behold. Poetry in a glass.You will never regret it mate.. Don’t get me wrong, bottles are fantastic too. However there is something damn exciting about pouring from a tap at home.Here is a pic of a half of my wheat beer that I sampled yesterday afternoon.
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... and while you may only be able (it might only be sensible) to make changes to one end of a see-saw at any one time, you do need to always be mindful of whats going on at the other end and how what you're doing is affecting the balance 
... and, when you do come back to thinking about hops, bear in mind that you don't only need to think about one biittering hop, that you are allowed to combine them and, IMHO, it does have an effect on flavour as well as (type of) bitterness ... Wheeler's recipes for Fuller's beers (and I'm sure he will have researched this with the brewery) use Target:Challenger:Northdown in roughly a 2:1:1 ratio for bitttering, those are higher:middling:lower cohumulone hops, respectively ... you could look at that, on paper, and consider that might give you a sort of "iron fist in a velvet glove" kind of bittering couldn't you? And, again IMHO, apart from providing one of the nicest smells in brewing when you add those three hops into a boil at the same time, I think it adds an assertive but rounded bittering, with some flavour complexity thrown in for good measure
Why thank youIt's a beautiful thing to behold. Poetry in a glass.
Hiya,
Far from being a "hijack", Fireside. I think it was mentioned very early on and in several posts that dispense is as important as other considerations, provided the beer is decent to start with.
I've never had a keg, Galena, when we were lads we had to condition our beer in an old Smith's Crisps bag or an empty packet of Players No. 10, but, until I moved to France, most of my beer went into plastic pressure barrels. I've had some of them that have been months old, six or seven months, and as long as the pressure doesn't drop and let air "glug" back through the tap, the beer remains perfectly sound to the last drop.
Fair enough, although on that point it may be advantageous to adhere to the same bittering hop variety(s) and ibu level for consistency. Something middle of the road with a cohumulone % of around 30% of the alpha acids would then give you movement either way if this tweak is desired in the future.
Exactly why I stated anecdotally. Myth? Yes, it was a flawed experiment, but one that hasn't been disproven, or rather it hasn't been proven higher cohumulone doesn't have a harsher bitterness. Yet, people continue to perceive a difference. Either way, whether through increased solubility or different character, choosing a hop with higher cohumolone will still yield increased bitterness. It's odd that YCH Hops et al make a point of giving the Cohumulone percentage in their hop profiles, when the myth dictates it is irrelevant.
Oh you know this isn’t over
Really? What's perpetuating the myth then? I doubt many people have read Rigby.
Only answering the request, out of politeness.
Oh yes I know.Only answering the request, out of politeness.
But it was! Fireside just hasn't got the finesse of a serial thread hi-jacker like me
☺
... for example ...
... now, OK, when you described Target as being a hop that gives that "raspy bitterness" there, we now understand you meant that it does that because it has a low beta-acid/alpha-acid ratio ... but you must recognise that it also has relatively high co-humulone levels, as well ... so by stating that Target gives a "raspy bitterness" you are adding to the very anecdotal evidence that you're trying to counter
