Harvest brew with wet hops.

TheRedDarren · May 5, 2016

Fellow brew geeks,
I thought I'd get this one started early.
There are a few of us growing our own hops (although this thread is in no way restricted to only those who do) and I'd like to start swapping info on using them and what brews we are going make.

As far as I know already, if using them wet you'll need to use roughly 8 times as much. Wort losses to hops will need to be accounted for!

I think I'll make a low abv Smash with mine, which are First Gold.

chuffer · May 5, 2016

How much are you getting from your harvest?

TheRedDarren · May 5, 2016

chuffer said:
How much are you getting from your harvest?

I think from memory, just under 500g. The plant was in its first year after a very late planting out. It turned out to be ornamental rather than something I could brew with so I swapped it for First gold.
So... I'm hoping to get about 500g, maybe more if I use some liquid seaweed feed.

image.jpg

jceg316 · May 5, 2016

I did a harvest ale using my homegrown Fuggles, some store bought Chinook for bittering, and as a base malt munich, yeast was S-23.

I remember trying it out the fermenter and it was amazing. But after bottling it wasn't nice, it tasted almost like a different beer and I have no idea why, could have been a dodgy bottling bucket (it was pretty old at the time), or could have dropped something in it when I was testing the gravity. Was pretty sad to see the first harvest go to waste. I can't remember exactly how much I got, but remember it worked out 5X the dried amount I would put in. Maybe 240g?

Anyway, this year will probably do the same. Use a store bought hop for bittering so I know what sort of bitterness levels I'll get and use late additions of my homegrown stuff. Trouble is, I have saaz, fuggles, chinook and cascade. They all flower at different times, so I'm tempted to dry them and wait until they;re all ready and make my own IPA.

sponge_ · May 5, 2016

Make a small tea with them (just with boiling water) to get an idea of the flavour and aroma they've produced.

Working out IBUs is much more of a guessing game, but I've had decent success using them at whirlpool/cube and dry hop to give a nice bit of flavour and aroma without having to worry about IBUs too much.

chuffer · May 5, 2016

TheRedDarren said:
I think from memory, just under 500g. The plant was in its first year after a very late planting out. It turned out to be ornamental rather than something I could brew with so I swapped it for First gold.
So... I'm hoping to get about 500g, maybe more if I use some liquid seaweed feed.

image.jpg

So am I right in thinking that, if you dried that out you're getting approx 50-100g dried hops per harvest?....you could prob get through that in one brew, maybe 2?

Covrich · May 5, 2016

Probably stupid question but I assume you can dry them out at home?

TheRedDarren · May 6, 2016

chuffer said:
So am I right in thinking that, if you dried that out you're getting approx 50-100g dried hops per harvest?....you could prob get through that in one brew, maybe 2?

Yes about that, maybe even a bit less.

TheRedDarren · May 6, 2016

Covrich said:
Probably stupid question but I assume you can dry them out at home?

Yup, there are a few techniques you can use at home. 1 is in a very low oven for a few hours (this is what I did last year, although it wasn't low enough) or 2 in the loft (quite warm up there in September) in an old net curtain. You'd just have to get up there and turn them regularly.

chuffer · May 6, 2016

On a tray in an airing cupboard?

jceg316 · May 6, 2016

i use a dehydrator on its lowest setting, which is 30 degrees for about 9 hours. This worked really well for my cascade, then I vacuum packed them and put them in the freezer until I use them. I opened my cascade 2 weeks ago, harvested them I think around september, was the best smelling bag of hops I had ever smelt, I wanted to eat them!

Covrich · May 6, 2016

jceg316 said:
i use a dehydrator on its lowest setting, which is 30 degrees for about 9 hours. This worked really well for my cascade, then I vacuum packed them and put them in the freezer until I use them. I opened my cascade 2 weeks ago, harvested them I think around september, was the best smelling bag of hops I had ever smelt, I wanted to eat them!

Sounds really good!! :thumb:

Harvest brew with wet hops.

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