BeerPal wrote: What's the drill for this hopping technique?
I use FWH for about 3 out of 4 brews anymore. If you are doing extract, I would do it like crashlann described above. I do all grain and batch sparge. I do my first runoff and add the hops to that. I then do my sparge and add that to the first runnings and hops. Total time between adding the hops and putting the kettle on the burner is about 10-15 minutes. Basically, just toss the hops into your boil kettle and drain the wort onto that.
Denny Conn did a bunch of FWH experiments a few years ago. While the perceived bitterness is pretty much the same as a 20 minute addition, laboratory testing showed the bitterness to be the same as the standard 60 minute addition. I find the bitterness to be much less harsh than the regular bittering addition, leading to the impression of less bitterness. I don't recall the exact science behind this, but it involves the binding of bittering compounds of the hops with sugars in the wort. This does take some time to take place at temperatures below boiling. If the hops are dumped into boiling wort, this binding will not take place.
Wayne
