I have hops, now what?

[Jimwine101]

After reminiscing with a customer at work about helping my grandfather with his winemaking back when I was a boy I found myself being given 4 demijohns, a fermentation bucket and a handful of airlocks. This was back in 2015 and I've been making "country wines" and various supermarket juice concoctions ever since. Because I'm a tight git, and because I like to stay true to the tradition of country wine making I'm quite strict with myself in that anything I make must be begged, borrowed, scrounged or got on the cheap. After 2 years and many batches of good and dodgy wine being made; I think I have a pretty good handle on how it works and have the basic skills pretty much locked down.
However this winter I had an interesting conversation with a customer who informs me that he has just invested in 280 more acres of land making him the biggest hop grower in the UK and has many different varieties, most of which could be counted a rare due to the lack of disease in our area etc. Well as you can imagine, my scrounge-ometer went off the scale and I got to work immediately blagging some hops.

https://flic.kr/p/Eaftxr

This morning I've come to work to find a nice fat bag of hops on my desk. My generous friend has written; GOLDINGS 2017 on the bag an there's enough dried hops to fill a couple of 2 litre ice cream tubs. They smell awesome, very soft and citrus sort of smell.
I've just realised that I have no idea what to do with them.
So, to get to the point; Bearing in mind my low budget, aversion to kits etc. What do I need to do, get, buy? And more importantly: What is the process? I've watched youtube videos but got scared. Some of the equipment and ingredients in some of them seems a bit exotic and serious.
Below is a list of my current equipment -

A large 5ltr two handled stainless saucepan
6no 5ltr Demijohns + bungs and airlocks
2no 5ltr Plastic demijohns
1no 25ltr Fermentation bucket
1no plastic fine mesh straining bag for the bucket
1no siphon tube with tap and anti sediment etc
1no 29ltr improvised plastic carboy (from a water cooler)
several fizzy pop bottles and wine bottles.

 

[Clint]

You can make beer with that lot although you may be limited to using dry or liquid malt extract for now as all grain needs some other bits of kit. A basic recipe would be one type of malt and your type of hops. A small amount of malt will require boiling in a quantity of water with the hops to add bitterness and aroma and flavour , the whole lot can then be tipped into a fv bin with the rest of the malt and topped up to your required volume.
Do you know the alpha acid units of the hops? This will usually be a number with a % sign behind it...this is important as the higher the number the less you need to achieve a given level of bitterness.
Have a quick look for extract brewing on the tinterweb.

 

[Jimwine101]

Clint, that is excellent news. You had me sold at "basic recipe". :)
Google told me that golding hops have 5% acid wotsit.
I think the hardware shop I get my kit from has big sachets of powdered malt.
Could you point in the direction of a recipe and detailed method for one of these batches?

Thanks for your reply!

James :)

 

[Jimwine101]

I'm googling extract brewing now.

 

[Clint]

The 5% may not be exact for your hops maybe just an average as factors can affect the real value but I don’t think you will have any bother giving it a go.

 

[Leon103]

Can't see the image.

One idea would be. Send me the hops. I make beer. I send you some beer.

 

[Duxuk]

What you could really do with is a bigger pan. You could easily enough do a 12 litre batch with what you have though, I think. I'd dissolve about 1.5kg of the dried malt extract in hot water. Get it close to boiling point for hygiene and chuck most of it in your FV. Then add more water to your remaining bit of extract and add hops when it comes to the boil. I'd try 50g. After an hour you can add this to your FV and hope you've got 12l or less. Make it up to 12l with boiling water then check the temp. If it's less than 80C then chuck in another 50g of hops. Leave to cool overnight then add some yeast. Gervin GV12 would be good, best rehydrated first. Leave to ferment in a place at less than 20C but not cold. After 10 days it should be finished but then add another 50g of dry hops and leave for another 4 days. It will now be ready to bottle or keg. Put a bit of muslin or net over your syphon to filter the hops out. Add 1/2 tsp sugar to each 500ml in your bottles. Cap and leave for 2 weeks.
I did loads of extract brews using this type of ghetto method and they were usually great. You'll have a hoppy blond beer. Enjoy.

 

[IainM]

The good news is that Golding hops are awesome. The bad news is that if you really want to go cheapo on the ingredients then you'll need a bigger pot (which I totally get btw - just today racked a cherry wine from last year's glut and bottled a plum wine from fruit of a branch that fell during last summer's storm), and go all grain. Failing that, the best bet is to do what Duxuk said. The dried malt extract will set you back just over £10 and I bet it'll turn out a winner.

 

[chthon]

Fresh Golding hops from 2017! (Eyes pop!)

 

[Jimwine101]

This is all very encouraging.
I've been swotting up on extract brewing and I'm feeling pretty confident.

It's going to hurt me Iain but I can stretch to a tenner for now. At least until I am proficient enough to get creative.

From what I've read everybody wants me to be able to boil 15l of water to make a batch. Not an option as I don't have a pot or anywhere to keep it. I'm stretched as it is. I think I will take Dux advice and I'm going to scale everything down by a third and just make a small batch. Will be a good practise batch I think.

 

[Jimwine101]

Just curious. A lot of recipes say; use 3 gal of water, but you could use much less.
What if I 'cooked up' all the ingredients for a 5 gal batch into a one gallon 'concentrate' in my biggest pan, then dumped it onto 4 gal of hot water in my FV?

 

[IainM]

One of the good things about extract brewing is that you don't have to boil at full volume. Boil as much as you can, as this will get more out of your hops, but boiling 5L with the quantities suggested by Duxuk then topping up with water to 12 will be fine.

 

[Drunkula]

Great Brulosophy partial boil experiment recently has encouraged me to go for a full batch with a rather puny pot.

 

[Clint]

As said only boil up a small amount as you will need to get the remaining full volume down to pitching temp..around 20°c. The easiest way being to top up with cold water.....out of your tap is OK if it's drinkable...

 

[GerritT]

High gravity brewing tends to need more hops, relatively. So I've read. So not 1 on 1 scalable.

 

[terrym]

Just curious. A lot of recipes say; use 3 gal of water, but you could use much less.
What if I 'cooked up' all the ingredients for a 5 gal batch into a one gallon 'concentrate' in my biggest pan, then dumped it onto 4 gal of hot water in my FV?

Try this
A Simple Guide to Extract Brewing
Note in extract brewing you don't need to boil all the wort like you do in all grain.
Typically this week I made one brew of 18 litres using one 3.5litre and one 5 litre pot.

 

[Duxuk]

GerrittT is right. Boiling a small volume is not the most efficient way to use hops. Fortunately it sound like you've got plenty of hops so you can whack them in. My little recipe would end up nicely hoppy. I've based it on an assumed 5% alpha acids in your hops. Still think I'd go for 12l. I used to do 15l batches in a 5l pressure cooker pan.

 

[GerritT]

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From what I've read everybody wants me to be able to boil 15l of water to make a batch. Not an option as I don't have a pot or anywhere to keep it. I'm stretched as it is.

Once you have a 20L pot, you can use it for storage. Malts, sugars, hopbags. But small batches have their advantages too :)

 

[Jimwine101]

Thank you guys for the advice, I'm getting my head round it now.
I really like this recipe from Dux (quoted below if you've forgot.)
I just wanted to double check it's not missing an ingredient. Just because unlike every other recipe I've seen, it has no sugar or malt syrup in it. The ones without malt syrup have about 250g of sugar per gal. Is the powdered extract enough? I will buy 3no packs of Muntons light I think.
Assuming that you all purchase online - what is your favourite site to get it from?

What you could really do with is a bigger pan. You could easily enough do a 12 litre batch with what you have though, I think. I'd dissolve about 1.5kg of the dried malt extract in hot water. Get it close to boiling point for hygiene and chuck most of it in your FV. Then add more water to your remaining bit of extract and add hops when it comes to the boil. I'd try 50g. After an hour you can add this to your FV and hope you've got 12l or less. Make it up to 12l with boiling water then check the temp. If it's less than 80C then chuck in another 50g of hops. Leave to cool overnight then add some yeast. Gervin GV12 would be good, best rehydrated first. Leave to ferment in a place at less than 20C but not cold. After 10 days it should be finished but then add another 50g of dry hops and leave for another 4 days. It will now be ready to bottle or keg. Put a bit of muslin or net over your syphon to filter the hops out. Add 1/2 tsp sugar to each 500ml in your bottles. Cap and leave for 2 weeks.
I did loads of extract brews using this type of ghetto method and they were usually great. You'll have a hoppy blond beer. Enjoy.

 

[terrym]

I just wanted to double check it's not missing an ingredient. Just because unlike every other recipe I've seen, it has no sugar or malt syrup in it. The ones without malt syrup have about 250g of sugar per gal. Is the powdered extract enough? I will buy 3no packs of Muntons light I think.
Assuming that you all purchase online - what is your favourite site to get it from?

You don't really need anything else other than malt extract and hops to make beer at its basic best. You can use either liquid or dried malt extract. Dried is a bit more expensive, but probably better. 650g dried is about 750g liquid ME. If you substitute some sugar for ME the beer will be thinner to the taste but about the same in terms of ABV, but will be cheaper to make.
Many people buy online where prices are usually cheaper but if you are not spending much there is a cost of delivery to take into account. The HomeBrew Company give good prices, there is a forum member discount, but the minimum spend before there are no delivery charges is £70. The Homebrew Shop is another online supplier, as is Geterbrewed. There are many others.
My advice to you is to buy 1.5 kg of medium spray malt from your local shop and use that to do a basic recipe with your two 5 litre saucepans, together with some of the hops you already have. Keep the method really simple and you will be able to knock out an acceptable beer. If you aim for the 12 litres that will produce a beer of about 4.3%ABV.
Then when you have got the hang of it you can think about larger volumes, more ingredients to enhance your brews, and perhaps more equipment.
Finally, although really targeted at newbie kit brewers, you might find this useful since many of the basic brewing principles are the same
Basic beginners guide to brewing your own beer from a kit - The HomeBrew Forum