Substituting Hops Flowers For Pellets

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bobzed57

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I've been brewing for a while have been using hops pellets in my brews. Last spring I planted Chinook and Hallertau rhizomes and it looks like I'm going to get a good crop of flowers from the Chinook. Is there a rule of thumb for using hops versus pellets? I've seen 1:4 ratio and 1:8 mentioned in a few places.

My plan is to harvest the hops and dry them calculating the wet and dry weight to work out how much moisture is left in the flowers, but from then on, I'm not sure on what amount to use when compared to pellets.

Cheers

Bob
 
Flowers compared to pellets will usually give slightly less aa%.

HOWEVER:

Homegrown acid amounts are unknown and can't be compared with commercial crops. You could do one of the following:

Use pellets for bittering and flowers for flavour/aroma
Get them tested (not sure where or how much that would cost)
Use Dr Smurto's method - as per 1 but keep making the same beer and slowly replacing the pellets with flowers until you have an inkling of how much you think you need to get what you want. Hope I've got that right Dr S.
 
home grown will need a little playing with, but in general flowers require about 10% more than pellets, but as manticle says without an actual test of AA you have

no real idea.

I would say start at the assumption of same AA as commercial then adjust as required by taste.
 
home grown will need a little playing with, but in general flowers require about 10% more than pellets, but as manticle says without an actual test of AA you have

no real idea.

I would say start at the assumption of same AA as commercial then adjust as required by taste.

This would be what i would do. 10% more then the pellet, and adjust from there using the AA from commerical varients as the starting point. I, myself, would be on the lower side of the commerical AA properties (ie, 12-15%, go with the 12%).
 
The 1:8 ratio you mention would be for weight of wet hop compared to dry hop.
i.e. You pick your hops and they weigh 800gms off the bine. You then dry them and you are left with 100gms of dry hop flowers.
 
Thanks for the snappy responses. It seems the consensus is rather than rely on a strict ratio, brew for flavour. Makes sense really when I think about it.

Cheers

Bob
 
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