Reuse Of Flavour/aroma Hops

[itguy1953]

I am currently using aroma and flavour hops to add to hopped extract cans.

I am moving to AG brew soon, and with the high cost of hops, I am wondering if I can reuse the hops for bittering after I have extracted the flavour and aroma oils.

To get the aroma from the hops I currently boil them in 500ml of water for 1 minute. Then I leave them steep for approx 1 minute, and then strain them into the fermenter.

I then take the hops from the strainer and boil them again in 500ml of water for 10 minutes to get out the flavour. Again I filter the liquid into the fermenter.

I then throw away the hops with the bittering oils still in them.

What I propose to do with the AG brews is to still do my first 2 steps, and then add the residual hops to the boiling wort, and boil them for 1 hour to extract the bitterness. Depending on the hops I use, I might need to add more fresh hops to get the bitterness right.

I am currently planning brews with Saaz hops, which have low Alpha acid, but high flavour and aroma. As this hop is so expensive, I might use some other high alpha acid hops to supplement the bitterness. Anyone have any ideas on what other hops go well with Saaz?

Barry

 

[bakkerman]

There is a flaw in your reasoning here.

How do you know the alpha acids have not been dissolved? Because no bitterness is added? I bet they have been dissolved, but that the have not been isomerised. Isomerisation happens during the boiling of the wort, and isomerised alpha acid is the bitter constituent in beer.

I think the reusing of hops is a no go.

Plenty of hops combine well with Saaz, look for a specific bittering hop, they will impart very little aroma if you boil them long enough, only bitterness. So if you ad Saaz late, full aroma.

 

[itguy1953]

There is a flaw in your reasoning here.

How do you know the alpha acids have not been dissolved? Because no bitterness is added? I bet they have been dissolved, but that the have not been isomerised. Isomerisation happens during the boiling of the wort, and isomerised alpha acid is the bitter constituent in beer.

I think the reusing of hops is a no go.

Plenty of hops combine well with Saaz, look for a specific bittering hop, they will impart very little aroma if you boil them long enough, only bitterness. So if you ad Saaz late, full aroma.

I do not know if the alpha acid oils are dissolved or not. That is really the crux of the question. I thought that I had read that the bittering oils did not dissolve easily in boiling water, and that they are extracted in the boiling of wort via the isomerisation process. Does any one know if all of the oils are extracted in a 1 minute or 10 minute boil?

I have some Brewers Gold to add for bitterness. Anyone used this before?

 

[PostModern]

Homebrew is meant to be inexpensive, but that's no reason to be cheap.

 

[Brewer_010]

Homebrew is meant to be inexpensive, but that's no reason to be cheap.

Agreed

Buy some good bittering hops wiht high aa, and use the aroma hops sensibly. A decent beer can be made with 10g of bittering hops and 40g of aroma/flavour hops - that's still less than five bucks.

 

[Adamt]

You're also likely to wash a lot of the resins off during the first or second boil, the resins being what will isomerise and dissolve.

 

[dc59]

I'm going to agree with Bakkerman you can use just to 15g of super alpha in a 60min boil to get about 25 IBU's while having a fairly neutral flavour which will be dominated by your later hop additions of Saaz and others of the like.

That way you could get away with a fairly small amount of hops for a standard size batch. Your brewers gold would be good to use for bittering but not sure of what flavours it will give, sorry Barry.

Dave.

PS, on a side note my LHBS guy mentioned that they have also been hit with a price rise in grains which they have passed on to the customers, 4kg bags have gone up from $20 to $22.50. Fortunately 25kg bags have remained unchanged .

 

[bljpoad]

The only reuse my hops get is either compost or mulch. I recon that most of the alpha acids would be extracted within 5 - 10 mins, so it (bittering) would be a question of isomerization. This is just a gut feeling, I have nothing to really back it up though.

If you are worried about cost, have you thought of using isohop extract?
- Bez

 

[redhill]

I am going to disagree, I dont see why you couldnt use them. It might be simpler to bag late additions (and dry hops I suppose), and use them to bitter your next batch, rather than drawing various extracts and adding them back into the beer. You may find it takes a lot of experimenting to get bitterness right using hops this way, and it may never give you quite the effect you want, but I dont think its true that there is no useful bitterness of any kind extractable from late hops. Ive never bittered a whole batch like this, but I have boiled up hop trub and used the bitter tea for starters. Works well. The historical practice was to boil the wort for small beer with the spent hops from the stronger worts drawn from the same mash. It wont taste the same as adding smaller amounts of fresh high alpha-acid hops, but that is no reason not to try it.
Cheers,
Redhill

 

[dr K]

It is certainly not without precedent.
The well known, if obscure process of hop in a bag has had much discussion at various times and whilst hop in a bag has had its detractors (usually rather coarse remarks such as "why would I want to hop in a bag with you, mushroom ?") it certainly seems to have stood both the test of time and experience.
This is surely a logical extension of the HIAB process, given, as always great care with cleanliness the Bitter in a Bag concept could well be the next major force in home brewing, skimming or collection of yeast for re-use is all but compulsory for major and many mega brewers so why waste those precious bittering components, especailly given the massive price increases...
BIAB...the new frontier.

K

 

[3G]

Im pretty sure many large British breweries would run the wort into the kettle and use the finishing hops to bitter with 'in the olden days'
Ive read or been told this somewhere along the way, dont ask me where though. :mellow:

 

[PostModern]

If you don't mind the randomness of the process, it could work. For myself, I'd rather avoid the mess and the hit and miss calculations for the sake of the price of a schooner of beer per batch. If we ~really~ felt the impact of the hop crisis, I might be looking at this myself. At the moment, tho, hops are just a little pricier, they ain't yet scarce.

 

[mfdes]

Another reason the reasoning is flawed is that, even if your hop resins have not dissolved in the wort, your lupulin glands have certainly dispersed, especially with pellets, and also woth flowers. Thus you have no idea how bitter your recovered hops are because you have no idea how many lupulin glands have come off the bracts.

MFS.

 

[tourist]

I once dry-hopped with flowers in a mesh bag, then used the same hops for bittering in my next brew (along with some fresh hops). It worked - both batches were very drinkable, but the whole process was not very scientific and I have not done it again. My suggestion is to give it a try and make meticulous notes to document your experiences, just like I don't.

 

[PostModern]

I am far from scientific, and my results are usually good. Ask the drinkers of my "bucket beer" (bucket of malt, handful of hops, about an hour boil, etc). I generally think that home brewers can be overly anal about things that don't matter so much.

However, having no idea how much alpha acid is left in your bittering addition is not a path I'd go down. It might work consistently with a consistent recipe, the same hops each time, etc. Not saying it isn't worth looking at, but I'll let someone else brew and serve the trial batches between now and the time the method is refined

 

[maltedhopalong]

If it's about the money, grow them. Then you will realise that only using hops once ain't such a big hassle

 

[drsmurto]

Wasnt this exact question answered in the latest BYO magazine in depth?

 

[PostModern]

Wasnt this exact question answered in the latest BYO magazine in depth?

So what was the upshot?

 

[devo]

I am currently using aroma and flavour hops to add to hopped extract cans.

I am moving to AG brew soon, and with the high cost of hops, I am wondering if I can reuse the hops for bittering after I have extracted the flavour and aroma oils.

To get the aroma from the hops I currently boil them in 500ml of water for 1 minute. Then I leave them steep for approx 1 minute, and then strain them into the fermenter.

I then take the hops from the strainer and boil them again in 500ml of water for 10 minutes to get out the flavour. Again I filter the liquid into the fermenter.

I then throw away the hops with the bittering oils still in them.

What I propose to do with the AG brews is to still do my first 2 steps, and then add the residual hops to the boiling wort, and boil them for 1 hour to extract the bitterness. Depending on the hops I use, I might need to add more fresh hops to get the bitterness right.

I am currently planning brews with Saaz hops, which have low Alpha acid, but high flavour and aroma. As this hop is so expensive, I might use some other high alpha acid hops to supplement the bitterness. Anyone have any ideas on what other hops go well with Saaz?

Barry

no.

 

[drsmurto]

Dont have the copy on me PoMo but recall it was possible, particularly for aroma and dry hopping additions. I believe the bloke suggested reducing the AA% down in your calcs by as much as 30% to account for losses and i suspect this would also depend on whether you chill or not.......... Sort of a suck it and see experiment.

On the whole tho, i wouldnt bother, hops just arent that expensive. Yet.