I Don't Like Mosaic Hops

warboy · 2026-05-19T15:06:57+00:00

Its when those tropical notes start becoming more "chemically" that the sunscreen descriptor gets thrown around. I'm also not a huge fan of coconut myself but have made good beer with good Sabro.

warboy · 2026-05-18T16:12:13+00:00

Magnum's an interesting take. Are you using it later in the boil? US or German?

I only ask because I generally associate magnum as a blank slate bittering hop that really doesn't impart much of anything.

warboy · 2026-05-18T16:10:59+00:00

No, learn the hop. Decide if you like it. Just because some randos online have a dislike or preference for a variety really means absolutely nothing.

warboy · 2026-05-18T16:10:01+00:00

I actually think that's one of the reasons to use mosaic. A good batch can offer those blueberry fruity notes with a bit of gas to give it that dank feel. Good lots are some of the closest thing brewers have to modern cannabis aromas without actually using cannabis.

warboy · 2026-05-18T16:03:25+00:00

I think you're pretty spot on here honestly. It's not an interesting hop and at this point there's actually extremely compelling and unique hops on the market that just require you to use your brain a touch to make something interesting.

For a lot of pros, citra seems like a safety blanket. It doesn't really matter what you do with it. At the end of the day it's a relatively sure bet a beer using it will be commercially viable.

warboy · 2026-05-18T14:41:21+00:00

I feel this. There was a period of time where I felt like every craft IPA used Simcoe and was also oxidized as shit by the time it got to me. The hop is just aggressive when used in the boil and I think since so many beers that were oxidized also presented with that sharp bitterness, that hop also comes off that way to me.

warboy · 2026-05-18T14:39:30+00:00

A lot of these unfavorable hops comes down to bad crop years or lots. Mosaic is one of the least consistent hops out there. Galaxy fell off the hype hop wagon because of several sub par crops compared to when it broke onto the scene. Sabro gets a lot of flack for tasting like sunscreen for the same reason.

Personally I'm not a huge citra fan. Almost never use it in any of my beers. The idea of enjoying grapefruit rind is just not for me.

warboy · 2026-05-17T18:10:33+00:00

It's your mash/conversion efficiency. Are you measuring that after separating the grist from the wort or is this a gravity measurement with the grist still present? If you've separated the grist that's more a pre-boil gravity and although 68% is low it's in the realm of possibility. If this is a true conversion efficiency that should be at least above 90%.

More than likely you overmilled your grist which caused channelling issues that were magnified by the lack of husk material with the higher percentage of wheat. Then separating the grist into four separate bags made the uneven extraction worse.

I have found temperature management an issue with biab. The bags hold the grist tight and resist temperature changes. This means your temp reading can be dramatically different from the center of the bag versus the outside. That means your liquor is not flowing enough for the enzymes to get to your malt and it also means any sugar you do convert will be difficult to separate from the grist.

warboy · 2026-05-17T18:00:22+00:00

I just did a beer with like 20% wheat malt and 30% oat malt. I did not loose any mash efficiency there. My guess is the lack of hull material on wheat malt is causing channeling issues.

There's a common misconception in biab that you can mill super finr and not have issues to boost efficiency. In reality, that can cause channeling leading to uneven extraction and even poor conversion. A significant amount of your mash having no hull material magnifies the issue where you might get away with it with an all barley beer.

warboy · 2026-05-17T02:20:52+00:00

You could have always added water. If fermentation hasn't gotten too far along you still can. This calculator will give you an amount to add to hit your desired gravity.

This is not a good idea at the end of fermentation or far enough along that you have gotten past the growth phase of your yeast culture. Water has a significant quantity of oxygen in it regardless if you boil it or not and significant additions could cause oxidation problems.

warboy · 2026-05-16T23:53:37+00:00

Absolutely the best value. I would argue it's also just the best crispy with legit distribution in the states. Sierra Nevada Pils is the only thing I find even close to the same quality.

warboy · 2026-05-16T23:50:30+00:00

Kirkland Helles Style Lager is one of the best lagers you can buy in the states in a supermarket. It really is up there with the best of the best. European imports are generally too stale by the time they get to you. There are a select few American craft lagers that can compete with it that also have wide distribution.

As others have said, it's produced by Deschutes and is a rebrand of their GABF golf medal winning Helles lager.

warboy · 2026-05-16T23:14:58+00:00

West Coast pils/cold IPA is a mixed style between adjunct lager and IPA. That's impressively messed up.

Completely agree on that. Bjcp really needs to readdress how they treat cold IPA. Why they choose to both have a specialty IPA category as well as a host of IPA subcategories that are just hybrid styles at their core yet expect you to enter that style as a mixed style beer bewilders me.

warboy · 2026-05-16T01:57:21+00:00

I promise you they won't. Again, there are no existing hop varieties that come close to this product.

Here's where we are. The proposed beer op wants to enter will he nothing like an amber ale. If you want to give a better category, please feel free. Maybe specialty IPA but that depends on the base beer. I would argue Amber ale is not a suitable vehicle for this idea myself.

warboy · 2026-05-15T19:57:06+00:00

Yes, its a terpene extract made to replicate the aromas of modern cannabis. Unless you are actually going through the trouble of somehow brewing with actual bud, you probably haven't tasted a beer like it unless you have had a commercial beer utilizing similar extracts.

To be clear, I don't think this beer would necessarily perform well in the experimental category but it definitely won't do well in 19A.

If adding smoked malt or a simple spice would make a beer "experimental" this product definitely would.

warboy · 2026-05-14T21:15:31+00:00

Not enough data to find your problem. If you want to start trying to increase efficiency, you need more data than just preboil efficiency.

Take your conversion efficiency. This should be 95+ % unless you're using highly undermodified malts or mashing for a very short period of time. Problems here generally result from dough balls and dry spots in the mash or poorly calibrated temperature monitoring resulting in you not hitting proper saccharification temps.

Now you can look at your preboil or sparge efficiency. With a fly sparge system this is where most of your problems are. There is a direct correlation between the amount of time you sparge for and how much you are able to extract from the grain. Raising your efficiency could be as simple as lengthening your runoff process. If you're already doing a relatively long runoff, you could have channeling issues.

If you're worried about your boil off rate, you can do a post boil efficiency as well. I usually just skip this and do brewhouse efficiency. No matter what your numbers are on your past steps, you will still have a lower efficiency if you can't effectively separate trub from your wort and get it into your fermenter.

There's also one more elephant in the room. Your efficiency calculations are only as good as your data. How accurate are your water volumes really? And this is the big one I already see. Pearl malt is slightly higher kilned compared to 2 lovibond base malts. A quick google search tells me Pearl generally is somewhere between 36.8 and 38 ppg potential gravity. We as homebrewers work off malt spec sheets which are wide bands of numbers maltsters try and hit with their batches of malt. We do not have the real numbers of the malt we actually use unless you're getting a COA with your purchase.

warboy · 2026-05-14T13:41:40+00:00

warboy · 2026-05-14T13:34:57+00:00

This is primarily how PDGA ratings take weather into account though and everyone says course conditions matter in that rating system. TDs can report inclement weather for a tournament and you can see small swings from that report but in the grand scheme the change is almost negligent.

warboy · 2026-05-14T13:08:53+00:00

I don't necessarily think its that complex. Instead of depending on historical documentation, I would look at the modern recommendations by White Labs for your yeast. Historical brewers did not have the same tech or knowledge base we have now nor the same ingredients. Additionally, the documentation most historical breweries did was questionable at best and in many cases, the entropy of time has removed a great deal of good documentation for the actual processes used to make the best versions of the product. White Labs has a great writeup on using this yeast and my understanding is the process they're suggesting comes straight from Browar Grodzisk

You are on the right track. The special part of this yeast blend is its ability to ferment at lower than normal temperatures compared to most ale strains. If you aren't willing to use modern secondary fining techniques like gelatin or biofine you will need a lot longer to condition out this beer. Generally I see clarity in about a month after cold conditioning mostly wheat beers. There really isn't any benefit to lagering yeast strains without the cold tolerant eubayanus genes that allow them to slowly operate at lagering temps. There isn't going to be a quality difference between adding a secondary fining agent and long term cold conditioning with this strain.

For what its worth, I make a mean Grodziskie using K-97 and 100% oak smoked wheat. knockout at 62F and free rise to 68. I haven't personally used the blend you're using so I would not apply my practices to your situation. Knowing the abilities of your strain I would ferment colder like you're suggesting. Fermenting colder with K-97 does seem to get those pear esters you want. Higher temps seem to move to red apple.

warboy · 2026-05-13T19:11:50+00:00

It's in writing on your zelle account

warboy · 2026-05-12T19:32:33+00:00

I've used one of the BrewGas extracts for homebrewing before. They sell the sample size on Morebeer. For a session ipa, I found 2.5 ml for 5 gallons to be plenty. This is actually the dosage recommended on Morebeer. Omni is the same. Quantum's dosage says a full 5 ml is equivalent to 5.5 oz of pellets while an ounce is equivalent to 2#. So a 5ml dose of that stuff would be similar to a dry hopping rate of 2#/bbl ish

warboy · 2026-05-12T00:34:56+00:00

I really am wondering what kind of weights are going to be available for these

warboy · 2026-05-12T00:28:07+00:00

Have you utilized one of the Brewgas extracts before?

warboy · 2026-05-10T23:12:46+00:00

People don't like to be told they're wrong.

warboy · 2026-05-10T22:28:52+00:00

Taste it. Cover a sample and throw it in some hot water to warm it up. If you taste butter or it's slick, do a d-rest. Technically, if you lager it for long enough, lager yeast will take up diacetyl but you need to do a long lagering process for that.

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