# Freezing / reusing hops



## damoninja (18/10/13)

Hi all. 

I just did a brew and decided to keep the hops from the bag rather than just turf them. It was only 50g of Amarillo but 30 grams of that were late additions at 5 and 10 minutes, so I'm thinking surely there's got to be some bittering left in these. 

I pulled the hop bag out, let it drain and gave it a gentle squeeze. Then in a dish I gave it a good press to flatten into a cake and pulled it out, bunged it in a tiny snap lock container, added the small amount of liquid I'd drained in the dish and it's now in the freezer. 

I don't plan to use it for any specific recipes, maybe just use it when I do a bitsa brew. 

Does anyone else do this? Or have better methods?


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## twizt1d (18/10/13)

i found them to be pretty good for a 10 min bin addition


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## barls (18/10/13)

Why. they are cheap. We aren't talking 5 kegs a beer
Also if it was viable wouldn't the big boys do it


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## QldKev (18/10/13)

50g of hops.. Yamika averages about $14 a pound. 50g = 1/9 of a pound. 1/9 of $14 = $1.55 worth of hops.


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## Phoney (18/10/13)

I bet you're the kind of guy that saves old teabags to get more cups of tea out of each bag, aren't you? 

Seriously though, I'm trying to figure out ways to use up / get rid of my hop stash! Re-using dregs is crazy talk!


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## Black Devil Dog (18/10/13)

Just throw them into the wheelie bin, best rubbish bin deodoriser you can get.


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## HBHB (18/10/13)

Basically, once they've hit the boiling liquid, pretty much eveything is washed off & out, so there's nothing left but vegetal mater.

No point.

Martin


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## damoninja (18/10/13)

Thanks for the constructive (and not so much) feedback - if they're useless then I'll turf them. 

I was thinking about using them in something like a hopped cider what doesn't really need such an extreme hop profile. 

But if they're utterly useless I'll turf them.


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## Rodolphe01 (18/10/13)

I've read a few years ago maybe, pretty sure it was BribieG who posted, about late hops being recovered for bittering additions. I was thinking about this very thing last night and wanted to drag the thread up for a read/research.


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## Droughtmaster (18/10/13)

QldKev said:


> 50g of hops.. Yamika averages about $14 a pound. 50g = 1/9 of a pound. 1/9 of $14 = $1.55 worth of hops.


yakima rocks to aust. why bother with reusing


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## Droughtmaster (18/10/13)

all i can say is quality not quantity , personaly i wouldnt bother recycling ,there again if i couldnt get hops ,might be a diferent thing  kinda like recycling teabags to me


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## Cocko (18/10/13)

Save your bottle tops too..

Bend them flat and they may re-seal.



Really?


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## jaypes (18/10/13)

I know theres an amarillo shortage but really?

Its like using a condom twice, it can be done but why would you want to?


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## Cocko (18/10/13)

You can use it twice IF she decided it was time to try ayn...

ALL I can say, is I agree...

Just go fresh hops, EVERY TIME - thats whats it is about.

Get in to yeast if you wanna re-use stuff.


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## damoninja (19/10/13)

I get it, I've been brewing for a solid 8 weeks so I thought why not ask a question? 

People have mentioned re-using hops in other threads so I thought it might have actually been a practice.


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## ben_sa (19/10/13)

Dont...


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## Ducatiboy stu (19/10/13)

Cocko said:


> You can use it twice IF she decided it was time to try anylise your performance to see if it was worth reusing
> 
> ALL I can say, is I agree...
> 
> ...


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## Bribie G (19/10/13)

Rudi 101 said:


> I've read a few years ago maybe, pretty sure it was BribieG who posted, about late hops being recovered for bittering additions. I was thinking about this very thing last night and wanted to drag the thread up for a read/research.


Indeed I did an experiment with NZ Hallertau Aroma flowers, not really to save money but to try and get over the "no chill loss of aroma" thing that was raging in the forum at the time. 

Rather than boiling the crap out of the hops then adding more at the end I did the following:


Made a strong hop tea in a coffee plunger. Drained off and chilled in a jar.
Chucked the pressings in as my bittering boil. 
Poured the aromatic hop tea into the fermenter on pitching, to emulate a hop back having been used. 

I got good bittering - a lot of the Alpha Acids were obviously still in the hop flowers as they hadn't been flushed out too well by the hop tea process in the limited space of the coffee plunger. I also got a nice hop nose as well. 

However I wouldn't use the hops that were boiled to death in the first place, they would be pretty well stewed. My exercise was a special case re hop-back hop flowers added post boil. At the time some members disagreed that commercial brewers would ever do such a thing, although that's what inspired me in the first place. I couldn't find a reference anywhere to where I had read it, but after doing a search today - the Web having obviously grown a bit in the last few years - I've come up with a few refs now including the venerable Beersmith. 

Edit: to make it more authentic I suppose I should have made the hop tea with some boiled wort saved from a previous brew rather than boiling water. I'm doing a Best Bitter soon, might do the exercise again with some NZ Fuggles flowers or even some NS flowers and see how it goes. 

Further edit: of course the whole thing is "seat of the pants" stuff that could vary brew to brew as you can't be sure how much AA is left in the flowers. That's why I used a single hop to see what results I would get.


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