Brewing with old grains & hops

[dougieorr]

I've been home brewing for many years, originally with kits & extract but All-Grain for the last 10 years.
Whilst 'working from home' due to the corona virus, my brewing has picked up & I decided to look at my stocks of grains & hops, as I have been known to buy grains & hops to match specific new recipes.
All my grains/malts are pre-crushed & stored in cool air-tight, water-tight, light-free barrels - not in fridge or freezer
Most of my hops are still vacuum packed & stored in cool air-tight(ish), water-tight, light-free containers - not in fridge or freezer

Issues
- some of my hops date back to harvest 2012, 2013, 2015 , 2017 etc...
- some of my speciality grains/malts are probably a few years old

Should I
- bite the bullet & chuck them all out
- use all my old speciality grains in a mash without a base pale-malt & use them up
- put some of the hops in a museum as they are no longer grown
- do a special brew brew with massive dry-hopping to use up aromatic old hops
- other

 

[Drunkula]

Sniff 'em. Chew 'em. If you spew bin 'em.

 

[dougieorr]

Tried sniffing a few of the older hops & they seem OK.

Grains - I've never brewed without a base grain of extra pale e/.g. maris-otter, golden promise etc... but think I will try a brew without this, using some of the older speciality grains.
Hops - I've brewed 40+ BrewDog recipes, but not many of the ecipes with huge amounts of hops in kettle or dry hopper - I think this is my chance to do some bammy hopping

 

[Northern_Brewer]

In general the enemies of flavour are oxygen and temperature - particularly the most volatile compounds which are the ones that are driven off by heat so are normally extracted by dry hopping. So normal advice is to use your best hops for dry hopping and the older ones in the boil/whirlpool. It depends on variety - Cascade are notoriously fragile - but in general vacuum-packed hops decline at <20% per year, the cooler the better. So I'd be relaxed about the 2017 ones, 2015 should be OK-ish, 2013 and earlier could be shot.

But it's complicated - see eg Scott Janish's review of the evidence, old hops are not all bad.

As for grains - you need base malts to provide the enzymes to unlock sugar from starch, an all-speciality grist won't work.

 

[dougieorr]

All smelled / tasted OK so decided to go for it .
Brewed yesterday with some of the older bittering / dual purpose hops & a few late additions for aroma - will decide about dry-hopping later
Paradigm Shift - All Grain Mixed-Style Beer Homebrew Beer Recipe - Brewer's Friend

 

[An Ankoù]

Old hops can be fine if trhey've been kept unopened vacuum packs and kept fairly cool. Some hops store better than others: Stan Hieronymus describes Challenger's storage as very good to excellent, but U.S Cascade as very poor. I think he's only referring to the degradation of alpha acid here. I've used 2016 harvest hops this year: Sovereign and Pilgrim, and they've been fine. I've used crystal malt that's 10 years old without noticing any off-flavours. Certainly I didn't do a side by side tasting of the same beer made with fresh crystal, but the beer was good.

 

[531Man]

Reviving a year old thread here, as I have at last braved opening a commercially sealed plastic a bag of Kent Goldings bought in, wait for it - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1985!
Hence price of 90p.
These were bought just before we started our family, so were (nearly) forgotten about.
Certainly home brewing was.
They were stored in the loft (hops, not the children), so in the dark. Sealed as I said so no Oxygen (again, the hops not the children, although there were times......... ).
Smell - 1st impressions nothing unpleasant, no skunk nor cheese!
Rub in the hand test ( my favourite with loose hops) - very faint hop. Nothing else.
Chew and taste - initially just dry petals, some time later dry slight bitteryness.
Didn't make me gag or anything.

So the question is: Just for interest are they worth trying with a kilo mash of Pale malt just as a full boil bittering hop? With perhaps some 10 min. hop to add aroma at the end like First Gold to add some freshness.
Or it it a complete waste of good malt, the fresh hops and the time?
Any comments welcome.

 

[steve123]

Give it a go, see what you end up with. I recently put all my old stock in to a brew. Not anywhere near as old as yours but it turned out surprisingly well. Grains were 18 plus months old. Hops a few years old. It turned out surprising well.

 

[531Man]

Give it a go, see what you end up with. I recently put all my old stock in to a brew. Not anywhere near as old as yours but it turned out surprisingly well. Grains were 18 plus months old. Hops a few years old. It turned out surprising well.

Thanks, I just may well do as I am obviously tempted or I wouldn't have asked, would I?

 

[steve123]

You never know could be best brew ever!

 

[531Man]

You never know could be best brew ever!

Or..............

 

[StJayJay]

I was just looking for a thread on old hops, nothing as old as those though, I’m only a bit older than those.
I’ve just found a box in the garage with 4 open packets of pellets in a bag ( EKG, Fuggles, Bramling X, Northern Brewer), there’s about 20g in each pack and were opened mid 2019 (all 2018 harvests), they don’t smell bad but don’t smell of anything really. Doubt they will be much use for flavour but wondered if they’d do for bittering or binning.

 

[RichardM]

I think @dougieorr should come back and tell us if his 877.68 IBU beer was drinkable.

 

[531Man]

I think @dougieorr should come back and tell us if his 877.68 IBU beer was drinkable.

Where and how on Earth is 877.68 IBU achievable?
And to 2 significant decimal points at that level to boot!

 

[RichardM]

Where and how on Earth is 877.68 IBU achievable?
And to 2 significant decimal points at that level to boot!

From 620g of hops in the boil of a 20l batch according to Brewers Friend. The link to the recipe is in an earlier post in the thread

 

[531Man]

From 620g of hops in the boil of a 20l batch according to Brewers Friend. The link to the recipe is in an earlier post in the thread

Ah right;
Thanks @RichardM , so using those figures as a reference, and doing a non-variety specific rough and ready conversion for a 5L batch with my bag of 114g I am sorry to say I would only achieve a theoretical bitterness of 645.51948387096 or maybe a few points less, as I have already chewed a few petals for taste testing purposes.
Disappointed.
I'll have to add a few more 10 min. fresher hops to boost it back up again to 877.68 IBU or more. And those might even add some hoppyness aromas to the rather flat old ones.

Regards,
Robin.

 

[531Man]

Ah right;
Thanks @RichardM , so using those figures as a reference, and doing a non-variety specific rough and ready conversion for a 5L batch with my bag of 114g I am sorry to say I would only achieve a theoretical bitterness of 645.51948387096 or maybe a few points less, as I have already chewed a few petals for taste testing purposes.
Disappointed.
I'll have to add a few more 10 min. fresher hops to boost it back up again to 877.68 IBU or more. And those might even add some hoppyness aromas to the rather flat old ones.

Regards,
Robin.

O. K. Mash and 113g senile hop boil just finished (so 1g must have been consumed or lost to the Angels).
Having read one of the suggestions I gave a longer main boil to extract any remaining bitterness properties. I wasn't expecting much in way of main boil aroma, but was surprised at the normal intensity house-wise. Even SWMBO'd made the same comment (never one to compliment). Total boil 90mins, with First Gold pellets added at 15mins. and at flame out to give some fresher aromas.
I'm playing 'safe' on mash flavours by not exposing the old hops to a simple Maris Otter pale malt mash, but have used some steeped rolled grains and 15% Light Crystal malt in the mash (I like barley twist, but not the dark caramel flavour).
So basically I'm hoping for a pale brown malty bitter around OG1050 but not important. If these old hops do have bitterness left, it could be Boddingtons of old bitter impact!
We shall see in a few weeks.View attachment 45568

All hops gone in.
That's 113g in ~5L.