Homebrewers love hops—it’s no secret. You will always remember the first time you smelled those powerful pellets drop into the kettle. The little bitter cones give beer life, personality and uncanny edginess. Without them, beer would often times be unbalanced, overly sweet and uninteresting.
Hops are so important, some people devote their entire lives to the plant—hop fascination transformed into obsession.
The “hop heads†out there, like Tom Lewis from Cheshire, England, are always looking for ways to push the hoppy envelope in their homebrews. A hopback is the perfect way to infuse fresh-hop character in beer just before it hits your glass. Check out Tom’s easy-to-build hopback project below!
Inspiration
At one of our local homebrew meetings, a few homebrewers and I were discussing ways we cram as many hops as possible into our IPAs (the beer style that dominated that particular meeting). One of our local brewers from the Cheshire Brew House was explaining future upgrades to our systems and how he wanted to build a custom hopback because his Blichmann HopRocketâ„¢ was too small.
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