Late Hopping

Late Hopping with Mr. Malty


With this technique comes the question of using whole leaf or pellet hops. Petersen uses a false bottom in his boil kettle and was able to use whole hops for his experiment. His concern was that a large amount of pellet hops might clog his counter-flow chiller. However, using whole hops results in a very large mass that can make it difficult to extract the wort at the end of the boil.
The majority of brewers I spoke with use pellet hops for this technique. Pellets break up quickly and expose the alpha acids for isomerization. Brynildson says, "I would always select pellets for late/whirlpool hopping."

Sousa suggests increasing the wort volume in the boil kettle. "You’ll lose some of your wort to the large amount of hops in the kettle," he said. "Increase your batch size an extra quart per five gallons to compensate."