Hopping Into The Experimental

[Martin Kernick]

Some thirty years ago I lived close to a guy who grew up in Kent, and who had a hop plant which he had brought ‘up North’ when he moved up. He grew it over the top of his greenhouse to provide shade in the height of summer and to bring some hops into the house for the smell, to remind him of his childhood. I asked him for a cutting, and I still have the grandchild of his hop growing in my garden. Each year I get a fine crop of flowers, sticky with yellow lupulin. The original plant, was, the owner suggested, probably a fuggle, but he was unsure.

I really don’t have any idea of the quantity of alpha acid in these hops, and obviously, I don’t have access to the sort of analytical laboratory that I’d need to find out. I will, possibly, at some stage, do a comparison by boiling up a hop tea with a hop of known AA value and compare it to a similarly produced hop tea made with my hop which will, hopefully, to give me some idea, and only then will I try using it as a bittering hop, but, in the meantime, this Autumn, I will be brewing with them as flame out hops and using them for dry hopping.

So, some questions. I’m willing to bet that there are members here who have some experience in using fresh hops. Do you have any advice for me? Are there any precautions you’d suggest, in terms of introducing unwanted infections, if I use these as dry hops - I can’t really see that they’d be different from any other hops used for dry hopping, would they? Can you think of any better ways of estimating their alpha content? Does anybody know how freezing affects fresh hops? Could I freeze some for use later in the year? Would it affect the aroma/AA content?

 

[hoppyscotty]

mate of mine has a hop plant growing in his back garden and we brewed a beer with them last year. Again not sure what variety they were but we picked them literally as they were needed in the boil and used them right away. I used normal pellet hops early in the boil to get some level of known bitterness in the beer then used the wet hops straight from the bine to the kettle in very late addition boil hops and a healthy dose in whirlpool. I didn't dry hop precisely because of risk of infection

Beer turned out OK... cant really say the flavour of the hops came out to the fore...there was a hoppy flavour but not hop forward in any way. The hop plant has grown up the trunk of an apple tree we hoped there might be some apple coming through in the flavour but we couldn't detect any.

Also you have to use a hell of alot...something like 7:1 ration vs pellet hops, so the kettle was really full of hops in the end. A nice little experiment but cant say I'll be rushing back to repeat. But guess it all depends on how good the hops you've got are.

Ultimately I didn't really care what variety of hops they were. I was only ever going to use them for flavour rather than bittering...using hops for bittering is a bit of a waste really...I like bitterness in beer...cant stand sickly sweet beers, but any half decent hops I'll always reserve for flavour.

 

[Martin Kernick]

mate of mine has a hop plant growing in his back garden and we brewed a beer with them last year. Again not sure what variety they were but we picked them literally as they were needed in the boil and used them right away. I used normal pellet hops early in the boil to get some level of known bitterness in the beer then used the wet hops straight from the bine to the kettle in very late addition boil hops and a healthy dose in whirlpool. I didn't dry hop precisely because of risk of infection

Beer turned out OK... cant really say the flavour of the hops came out to the fore...there was a hoppy flavour but not hop forward in any way. The hop plant has grown up the trunk of an apple tree we hoped there might be some apple coming through in the flavour but we couldn't detect any.

Also you have to use a hell of alot...something like 7:1 ration vs pellet hops, so the kettle was really full of hops in the end. A nice little experiment but cant say I'll be rushing back to repeat. But guess it all depends on how good the hops you've got are.

Ultimately I didn't really care what variety of hops they were. I was only ever going to use them for flavour rather than bittering...using hops for bittering is a bit of a waste really...I like bitterness in beer...cant stand sickly sweet beers, but any half decent hops I'll always reserve for flavour.

Yes, I agree, it certainly takes a lot of fresh hops to be the equivalent of dry hops. I did try a brew with these hops about 30 years ago and it was severely underhopped because I hadn't used enough. The beauty of fresh hops ought to be down to the fact that none of the volatile aroma compounds are lost to the drying process, so I guess dry hopping with them will show the most promise. They certainly smell deeply aromatic.