Glossary
First wort hopping
Adding hops to the kettle as the wort runs off from the mash, before the boil begins.
Also called fwh.
The full record
First wort hopping has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
First wort hopping — Add hops to the kettle as wort runs off from the mash, before the boil begins, for a bitterness widely described as smoother and better-integrated.
The hops steep in hot but sub-boiling wort for the duration of the run-off. The technique is widely reported to give a smoother, more integrated bitterness and better retention of hop flavour than an equivalent early boil addition, though the mechanism is not fully settled.
Related
- Isomerisation — What the extended hot contact promotes.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.