Hey Scott

,
In a rush today so I'll try and be quick

...
I loved your post above because it included myself and Alex Tronsky in the same sentence! Excellent but... If Alex knows 100% about managing/manipulating hops, I know only about 5% and I reckon Alex does probably know about 100%

. He is not well known but used to be the head brewer here in Western Australia of Little Creatures. His passion is American hops but I am sure he would be able to apply his skills/art to any hop. Just because he is not well known does not mean he is not the highest authority I have met on hops. He gave a talk to a few of us here once and I'll never forget it. Very passionate brewer who talked so much sense but who was too busy concentrating on making each batch match to probably ever get interested or have time to write about brewing.
So, you are stuck with the likes of joshua, myself etc

.
On FWH (and the BIABacus)
The BIABacus
is as well set up/designed, probably better, to deal with FWH at
our current level of knowledge. If I get more time later in the week (which I should probably spend on writing BIABacus help etc behind the scenes

) or maybe after a few beers, I'll try and explain why I wrote that last sentence. I said above that you should not consider FWH at this stage, not because the BIABacus can't handle it, but because we have, at this stage, so little concrete knowledge and it is unnecessary for you to flirt with it. Regard it as fermenting in an open fermenter. It is an advanced technique. Joshua is probably the best person to listen to and maybe Ray Daniels on this area because they have actually done it.
When one day in the far future, you do want to play with FWH, then the best way of doing it with BIAB is as soon as you pull the bag. But, like all the different chilling methods, who knows if your FWH will be the same as some fly spargers who takes 60 minutes after mash to get to the boil?
On Bittering Hops
Let me do the easy one first. Boiling longer than 75 minutes will only do harm. Got that readers? Make sure you do

.
If you have got that, then we can move on a bit...
Let's have a look at a high Alpha Acid Australian hop called Galaxy. Here's what I think (but don't know for sure) would happen if we want to use it as a bittering hop. I am not even sure that Galaxy, Citra, Amarillo etc were ever intended to ever be used as bittering hops but here are some thoughts...
1. Boil it for 90 minutes and you'll get almost zero difference in utilisation between 75 minutes and may possible venture into "over-cooked" hops territory. All I see here is no gain and potential problems.
2. Boil it for 75 minutes and get almost identical utilisation to that of a 90 minute boil with no danger of over-cooking.
3. Boil it for 60 minutes and all above problems will be null and void but I think that the fresh, citrussy flavours will start creeping in here.
4. Boil it for 45 minutes and flavours on such a hop variety will definitely creep in to the final beer.
Does that help Scott?
If you have found
the above or anything else of value on BIABrewer.info, consider supporting us by
getting some BIPs!