Wild hops question

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Scorrie

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2011
Messages
137
Reaction score
2
Location
Shetland
Whilst walking over the bridge in the village where we have a house out in Bulgaria just last week, I noticed some wild hops growing around the bridge railings. I pulled off a couple of cones and had a good sniff - smelt lovely!

My question is this - I know I can just chuck a few in as late hops to see what happens, but is there any simple way to determine the Alpha acid content of these hops beforehand?
 
Nope. None that I’m aware of. To get the exact number you’d need a laboratory sadly.

You could make a hop tea or even a starter and compare the same hops with an identical starter fermented with the same g/l ratios to give you a rough idea. Maybe something English and quite low in bitterness like Goldings.

If the Goldings you use were 4% aa and the wild hopped tea or starter is more bitter then you can probably assume the AA is more than 4%... but how much more would be a bit of a stab in the dark.
 
Thanks for the input, folks.

It looks like the scientific method of bunging some in and see what happens looks like the way forward to me :)
 
Back
Top