Hops - Flowers V Pellets For Noobies

[Fatgodzilla]

I'm ready to go to AG soon. What I know little about is why we use hops in pellet form as against flower form. Done a bit of reading but hate the sterile answers I'm reading. Lads, particularly you who know what you are talking about, why flowers (or for that matter plugs) over pellets ? Don't forget that a lot of people like me, who know nothing about hop flowers (let alone hops) will be reading so make your answers sensible and digestible, please.

 

[redbeard]

Pellets are more widely available. Recently plugs & some flowers became more available due to previous bulk buys & the efforts of one of the site sponsors. Also Customs / AQIS allows pellets but makes it difficult to import flowers generally (except nz ?).

 

[schooey]

Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I prefer flowers. I tend to brew to what I can get hold of at the time.

 

[Adamt]

You can only import whole hop flowers from New Zealand... unless you have a special license. I remember someone talking about a brewery here that uses US hop flowers... and quarantine officers crawling up the brewery's arse making sure they only get put in the brewery's beer.

The difference? Pellets are dried, mashed (or similar) and formed into small pellets. Plugs are whole flowers dried and compressed into a plug. Pellets form a sludge in the boil, plugs and flowers break up into petals. That's about all the difference. People tend to go for flowers if available though, maybe as they are assumed to be fresher, less processed.

 

[Simon W]

I remember someone talking about a brewery here that uses US hop flowers... and quarantine officers crawling up the brewery's arse making sure they only get put in the brewery's beer.

Little Creatures

 

[Thirsty Boy]

If you are looking for value for money... you will get more IBUs of bitterness per gram of pellets. About 10% more because they are crushed up nice and fine.

Flowers can help with getting clear wort into your fermentor. if you have screen in your kettle, the flowers will build up around it as you drain the wort and form a filter bed, much like the filter bed that builds up from grain husks in your mash tun. The hops wont get through and it will also take out a good proportion of your break material. The same happens if you run your wort through a hopback with flowers in it.

Maybe this means you will lose a bit less wort to trub in the kettle... not really sure, but it certainly can help with clarity and avoiding break material in the fermentor.

 

[Jazman]

pellets store better and retain a/a better and with flowers have better aroma and flavour but cant be stored for long thats the man diff

 

[T.D.]

After years of using both pellets and flowers, I can say that in my opinion there is no significant difference between the two. Fresh pellets are equally as good as flowers as far as I am concerned. Furthermore, pellets stay fresher for longer, are available in more varieties, don't require hop bags, absorb less wort in the kettle and are more compact to store. In my mind they are the clear winner. Having said that I still use flowers and plugs from time to time, but these days if I can get a hop variety in pellets or flowers I will go for the pellets. It comes down to a personal choice.

 

[sah]

Pellets take less storage space in your freezer. Better volume to mass ratio. This means you can keep a better variety of pellets and buy more per order.

Scott

 

[Guest Lurker]

The options are plugs, pellets, or flowers.

The preferred is a complicated function of price per alpha acid, aroma characteristics, storage characteristics, availability, and peformance in your kettle.

Availability used to be the most important factor, but isnt really any more.

So, the rest are one percenters, the main factor for the quality of your beer, is whether your kettle design is best suited to pellets, or to plugs/flowers.

A 1% improvement in aroma means nothing compared to the negative impact of bailing the wort out of your kettle when a hop flower sticks in the tap.

 

[Tony]

pellets do get better utilisation (more bitterness per gram) by the said 10% but i find hop flowers give a fantastic smooth finnish to the beer.

The bitterness is smoohter and the flavour and aroma is fresher and cleaner, not by much but it is to me.

ALso if you set up a flase bottom, as said before...... you get no hops through to the firmenter and they hold a fair percentage of the break in the process.

If i could get every hop in flowers, i woud never buy another pellet in my life.!!!!!

Im just glad we can get NZ hop flowers and they are great hops.

Noone complained about my sheep shagger in the NSW case swap and it had 360g of flowers in 45 liters plus a handful of D saaz pellets. everyone cmmentesd on how smooth it was........... FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!

Those hop flowers are about 2 inches deep in the bottom of an 18 gallon keg.

Only problem with flowers is they so soak up some wort and if you use lots of them you have to account for nome loss to the firmenter. i lost 2 liters in ithis mess! but it was worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cheers

 

[T.D.]

A 1% improvement in aroma means nothing compared to the negative impact of bailing the wort out of your kettle when a hop flower sticks in the tap.

This is exactly the way I look at it. Not worth the potential for a marginal improvement. Also, on this point, I have used US Cascade plugs from time to time and have NEVER achieved the same flavour and aroma that I have gotten from fresh Cascade pellets. Made me really question if all the extra effort required with flowers and plugs is worth it. Its good fun to use flowers every now and then - its a bit more exciting than the mush of pellets, but in a practical sense its pellets all the way for me.

 

[Screwtop]

As has already been pointed out Alpha Acid stability is better in pellets/plugs than flowers. Why do producers make pellets out of flowers, like all things commercial, if in doubt, tick cost. This is how industry prefers to buy them obviously there are cost issues re transport, storage/mass etc.

Some info from: http://homebrewandbeer.com/ingredients.html

Hops are available to the homebrewer in three forms:
Leaf hops, or hop cones, are whole hop flowers that have been picked, dried and compressed into bales. Because the processing for whole hops is minimal, most of the flowers' delicate glands containing the aromatic oils and resins are intact. However, because the surface of the hop flower, is exposed to air, they are more prone to going off and their oils breaking down. Therefore, freshness is essential when buying and using hop cones. If your recipe calls for hop pellets and you use cones, use about 25 per cent more cones.
Plug hops are whole hop flowers compressed into large pellets. The processing leaves the hop flower somewhat more intact than with hop pellets.
Hop pellets are pulverised hop flowers compressed into small cylindrical pellets. Many feel these are the best form of hop because there is minimum exposure to the air and the oils and aromas remain trapped inside the pellets. Usually, the pellets are sealed in a foil bag, which helps preserve them. If a recipe calls for hop flowers or cones and you use pellets, use about 20 per cent less pellets.

Hope this helps FG,

Screwy

 

[deebee]

I usually put plugs into the food processor and whizz it till it stops bumping. This produces a powdery mull that whirlpools into a sludge at the bottom of my kettle. The side mounted pick up tube on the kettle collects very little of it. It's effectively the same as using pellets and my impression is that I also get similar bitterness extraction to using pellets, however there are so many variables, it's hard to know for sure.

So for me I have no preference either way for plugs or pellets. My preference is for the freshest I can get, regardless of form.

 

[peas_and_corn]

pellets do get better utilisation (more bitterness per gram) by the said 10% but i find hop flowers give a fantastic smooth finnish to the beer.

The bitterness is smoohter and the flavour and aroma is fresher and cleaner, not by much but it is to me.

I didi a brew with POR flowers and got a much better flavour out of it than I ever got out of pellets, got to agree with you there!

EDIT: look, I'm not really sure how far away the keyboard is, OK?

 

[peas_and_corn]

I agreed with the sentiment that I quoted that flowers get a smoother flavour, remembering my experience with POR flowers compared to my experiences with POR pellets.

 

[domonsura]

Yep, smoother flavour from flowers in my opinion. That might just be 'palate' though.....but I rarely bother to use pellets these days.

 

[joecast]

wally,
what i do is just spalsh some wort on the sides of the kettle to get the hop material back into the boil. or, as you said, use a hop sock. after one use of a hop sock with pellets though, i have found i need to do the same thing. splash some wort around edges of the sock as hop material tends to stick to it. gives me something to do during the boil.
joe

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I periodically dunk my hop bag up and down like a giant teabag. Mainly for something to do, but a bit becaue not much of the boil's vigour makes it through the bag and I want to make sure that they all get stirred up well enough.

I find that if I use pellets in the bag, my utilization drops down by about the same percentage as if I was to use flowers. So I calculate my recipes as if I was using flowers, but actually use pellets in the hopsock almost every time.

 

[Lukes]

As GL said "availability used to be the most important factor, but isn't really any more".
Seems like only yesterday all you could get in a flower was P.O.R (not that there is any thing wrong with that) and I still have some of the Tassie Nugget in the freezer from the Guru's bulk buy.

The N.Z Hop flowers are the best thing to come over from the land of the long white cloud since half the population. :lol:

That said, certain hops are judged for certain styles but for personal consumption you can change and break the rules.
Stuster's hop of the week threads are a good read for matching hops to styles.

A malty lager (kiwi steam) with some Southern Cross flowers is the next brew for me due to positive comment posted here.

For hops in home brewing it's a personal thing depending on what you like, what you have tried and the gear you have in your set-up.

- Luke