# Describe your Home Grown Hop Harvest Beer



## Danscraftbeer (23/3/17)

Describe your Home grown Harvest beer experiences.

Ha. That is a question beyond my own vocabulary.
Eg.
I'm Drinking a Chinook Ale that's in the mid balance of APA.

Small bit of a neutral bittering hop like magna for ~60 minute to get 1/3rd of the total IBU level. Then a pillow full amounts at end of boil and hop stands to make up the rest of the IBU level.
That's how I'm wrangling my harvest ales.

How are you doing it?

Anyway this fresh Chinook forward beer to really get to know fresh Chinook is: funky, pungent, unknown cant describe or relate the smell or flavour. Maybe all the connoisseurs of hop flavour testers are better reference haha.
All I know is its real fresh like organic beer and its good. Even if I, or you may frown in unfamiliarity.


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## Tex083 (23/3/17)

Same! I battered with Brooklyn because I wanted to head in that direction with the end beer.
I tossed in 140g of dried home grown hops of unknown variety. Turned out good, probably too aggressive on the bitterness I think if I keg hop with Brooklyn, Mosaic, Galaxy or Simcoe it would be a much better beer.


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## Hop Star (14/5/17)

Finished my first ever harvest ale. A 5.2% Chinook session IPA. Used chinook pellets to bitter and a combo of pellets and loads of wet chinook flowers at flameout and dry hop (five days) before diacetyl rest.

I also get a real funky, pungent aroma that I just can't nail down. It's a bit much for me at the moment so I'm leaving it to condition in the bottle for another couple of weeks before trying again. Hopefully the flavour/aroma subsides a bit and it balances out a bit nicer. Will check in again here with progress


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## ScottyDoesntKnow (14/5/17)

My first hop harvest ale was a bit of a failure, i didn't have anywhere near enough hop flowers in the end.
Used Joe white pale malt only which was probably the first mistake and then I wanted to use a bit of Magnum as a first wort hop bittering charge but couldn't get my hands on any at the time of brewing. I ended up going with Sticklebract as it was all i could find at the LHBS that I thought would be a fairly neutral bittering hop. In the end it was my worst all grain beer (still marginally better than my first ever kit and kilo beer!) and I just finished off the last bottle of it last night thank F**k!


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## fungrel (15/5/17)

75/20/5 pale ale /flaked maize /Carapils. 12ibu of magnum at 60, 100g wet cluster in the whirlpool while draining into the cube. S-189 yeast underpitched at 14c.

A sweetness and subtle fruit flavour ive never tasted in a home brewed beer before. I am rarely happy with my beers, but this one won't last long.


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## neal32 (15/5/17)

Disappointing.

I did a basic American wheat with my smurto chinook hops last year.

It wasn't bad by any stretch but in no way on par with the hops I buy. I didn't even harvest/use the flowers this year, I just left them on the bine until they died and dropped off.

The savings of a few bucks is not worth drinking a double batch of meh. YMMV.


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## Danscraftbeer (17/5/17)

I'm now daring to use my home grown Hops all the way for bittering through to the end and its been pretty good. Victoria or Chinook for bittering and Cascade for all the late additions. Sometimes mix in a little Chinook and Vic for late as well. My Cascade this year seem more like American Cascade should be, Citrusy/grapefruit getting results very much like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. They seemed more tropical/floral last year. 
As for estimating the Alpha Acids I think its pretty close to:
Victoria 2016 = 8 AA
Chinook 2017 = 10 AA
Cascade 2017 = 5 AA
Hallertau 2017 = 3 AA if that. They are very subtle in aroma as well. A little disappointing.

Still yet to try my Goldings and Red Earth. A little wary of the Red Earth they had a very unusual and strong aroma like some kind of cooked food with onions ha. Another one hard to describe. I'm thinking safer to use for bittering in dark higher gravity beer maybe.


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## Hop Star (18/5/17)

Danscraftbeer said:


> I'm now daring to use my home grown Hops all the way for bittering through to the end and its been pretty good. Victoria or Chinook for bittering and Cascade for all the late additions. Sometimes mix in a little Chinook and Vic for late as well. My Cascade this year seem more like American Cascade should be, Citrusy/grapefruit getting results very much like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. They seemed more tropical/floral last year.
> As for estimating the Alpha Acids I think its pretty close to:
> Victoria 2016 = 8 AA
> Chinook 2017 = 10 AA
> ...


Yeah, a good mate of mine grew Red Earth for the first time this summer. He's harvested, dried and vac bagged them while figuring out what to use them in due to their very peculiar aroma. Pretty sure they'll end up in a dark ale of some time too.

Very jealous of your Cascade plants. They sound delightful!


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## drsmurto (18/5/17)

Victoria and Chinook hops are the 2 I've been using for years now.

Used in a range of beers but my favourite was an imperial IPA where I used only homegrown hops, no bittering hops at all. Followed a Pliny type recipe which including a massive dry hop resulting in the loss of ~5L of beer but I'd factored that in and brewed 25L so I still got a full keg. Amazing mango, peach from the Victoria plus the grapefruit/passionfruit of chinook.


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## philistine (18/5/17)

I chucked about 150gm of home grown cluster straight off the vine into an already fermented batch as a "dry" hop addition. 
This sat for a further 5 days.
The beer itself was a very simple recipe of 10% wheat with 90% pilsner malts.
It already had about 30gm citra added just before flame out, but as i no chill, it kinda ends up being a flavour/bittering addition due to the increased cooling time.

End result?

ABSOLUTELY F***ING DELICIOUS

Im not good with beer tasting words, but if i had to pick some, i would go with very faint blackberry aroma notes with a kind of rosehip/hibiscus tea type of flavour. (Like.... a bit sort of sour)
Im very familiar with citra and could easily tell the tastes apart.
Overall impression was hoppy flavour and aroma without bitterness, but subdued enough to balance with the malt without overpowering it.
Tbh- it was one of my favourite home brewed beers


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