Using Fresh Hops

[uniiqueuser]

Hi, haven't posted here for a while, many other things to do.

Some time ago I purchased a block at Kinglake. The house was toasted but the shed and various outbuildings survived (happily the previous owners survived but decided not to rebuild) and I was pleasently surprised to find a hop vine growing over the top of an old chicken coop. Of course until the cones started to come out I didn't know what it was. Needless to say the chicken coop has now found an important new function.

Various opinions from experienced brewers have suggested that they are Pride of Ringwood.

I wasn't able to harvest all the cones (I was stuck in hospital recovering from back surgery) but my sister and her hubby grabbed a garbage bag full which I have dried and frozen.

Now that is getting a bit colder, brewing season has opened.

Question is, how do I measure dried hops so I use the right amount? Once I determine the right amount do I boil them or just add them raw?

I don't currently have a useful (ie accurate) set of scales so I would be reduced to counting the number of cones. If someone could tell me how many cones I might need for a 23 ltr brew of a Coopers lager (for instance) it would be greatly appreciated.

What I am after is making the resulting beer a little more bitter. I am used to the taste of my largely 'megaswill' brews but they do tend to be a bit 'sweet'.

I am sure there is a thread concerning this and I will recieve a few 'why don't you look a bit harder you boofhead' messages but it is Friday and I have knocked off for the day.

 

[Wolfy]

From what I can tell you've got a few problems:
Firstly it seems that you're not certain about the hop variety, and often it's hard to determine what type of hops you're growing without brewing with them first.
Following on from that you have an unknown amount of Alpha Acids, so you're going to be guessing how strong they are - once again - until you brew with them at least once.
Interestingly, the fact that your scales are inaccurate is possibly the least problematic of the three issues you've outlined.

The first thing I'd suggest is a 'test brew', if you got a garbage bag full you should have more than ample hops for a number of batches.
The important thing for the 'test brew' will be to determine the hop flavour and make a guess at how strong (the AA%) they are.
Rather than accurately measure them the important thing will be reproducible results, 1 'container' full would be accurate enough for the 'test', and next time you can add more or less depending on how it turns out.

As for how many to use, its very hard to say, if they are POR then they'll have a high AA% (if their not the AA% could be anything).
I just used 80grams of home-grown/dried hops, and that amount filled a desert bowl full to over flowing (piled up on-top), however the hops I'm using are Goldings so I estimate they are around 5%AA so that should give me about 45IBUs after boiling them for 90mins (the good thing for me with using low AA hops is that the exact quantity does not matter so much, 70 or 90 grams will not make that much difference).
However, if yours are POR, they could have an AA % of 10 (or more), so when using them for bittering it will be more difficult to guess and you'll need to measure more carefully.

If you're using something like a Coopers lager kit, it will already have bittering hops in it, so you probably don't want to go overboard for the 'test batch', without scales, I'd suggest trying between 1/2 and 1 cup full, I'd estimate that to be between 10 and 20grams of hop flowers.

I'm not sure if I've helped at all, but I think you'll just have to try them and see how it goes, for subsequent brews (and next year etc) you will then have a good idea of how many to add.

 

[big78sam]

I'm not sure about the bittering. Many tend to use homegrown hops as a late flavour/aroma addition due to not knowing the AA but this wouldn't be the go for POR. I'd give it a quick go with a cheap kit and you can always ditch the results if it is really bad.

On a side point I bought a cheap set of jewelry scales off ebay. They were only about $10. I can recommend them as a great investment.

 

[manticle]

Hi, haven't posted here for a while, many other things to do.

Some time ago I purchased a block at Kinglake. The house was toasted but the shed and various outbuildings survived (happily the previous owners survived but decided not to rebuild) and I was pleasently surprised to find a hop vine growing over the top of an old chicken coop. Of course until the cones started to come out I didn't know what it was. Needless to say the chicken coop has now found an important new function.

Various opinions from experienced brewers have suggested that they are Pride of Ringwood.

I wasn't able to harvest all the cones (I was stuck in hospital recovering from back surgery) but my sister and her hubby grabbed a garbage bag full which I have dried and frozen.

Now that is getting a bit colder, brewing season has opened.

Question is, how do I measure dried hops so I use the right amount? Once I determine the right amount do I boil them or just add them raw?

I don't currently have a useful (ie accurate) set of scales so I would be reduced to counting the number of cones. If someone could tell me how many cones I might need for a 23 ltr brew of a Coopers lager (for instance) it would be greatly appreciated.

What I am after is making the resulting beer a little more bitter. I am used to the taste of my largely 'megaswill' brews but they do tend to be a bit 'sweet'.

I am sure there is a thread concerning this and I will recieve a few 'why don't you look a bit harder you boofhead' messages but it is Friday and I have knocked off for the day.

Just to add to the rest - don't count the cones. They will keep in the freexer or even fridge and scales are one of the easiest things to come by. I eat steamed plain rice for dinner at least once or twice a fortnight due to being a student and casual worker and I've purchased three sets, all from ebay. One for 1000g with 0.01 increments, one for 500g with 0.01 increments and one for 10kg with 0.1 increments.

All up, including postage I would have spent less than $50. 1 set cost 99C + $10 shippng from Hong kong.

Get some, brew a small batch with them and see how they go.

In fact if you want the 500g set which I don't really use, you can have them for the price of postage. I live in Victoria so it won't be much- send me a PM.

 

[chappo1970]

In fact if you want the 500g set which I don't really use, you can have them for the price of postage. I live in Victoria so it won't be much- send me a PM.

:beerbang: You Da Man Manticle... Now thats brewerhood ethos in action boys... take note :super:

 

[uniiqueuser]

Thanks to all for your replies.

One more question - once I have boiled the hops do I throw the whole lot in or do I strain it and just add the juice?

I may have answered my own question but it would stand to reason that the whole lot would be used because it sound like you are boiling the hops mainly to break down the cell walls to allow the yeast better access to the fermentable content of the hops.

Thanks especially to manticle for your offer of the scales. (OT) It goes to show that despite your student poverty you are still willing to help others- and you would reckon that your effort to make Australia a 'smarter' country would gain more support. Been there done that. When I was on campus the student association was running a campaign to increase Austudy payments- they had a slogan 'You can't feed a dog on Austudy'. It looks like little has changed! :angry: What are you studying?

I also bought some of these scales (0-100gm in 0.01 increments) some time ago but I thought they had either been 'scheduled for destruction' by my two young children (like so much of my other stuff) or I had hidden them so well from said children that I would no longer be able to remember where I put them. I have located them and they still work. Miracles never cease!

 

[BrenosBrews]

Strain it and add the juice. The point of a boil is to extract all the alpha acids. Hops have no fermentables,

 

[manticle]

Thanks especially to manticle for your offer of the scales. (OT) It goes to show that despite your student poverty you are still willing to help others- and you would reckon that your effort to make Australia a 'smarter' country would gain more support. Been there done that. When I was on campus the student association was running a campaign to increase Austudy payments- they had a slogan 'You can't feed a dog on Austudy'. It looks like little has changed! :angry: What are you studying?

Glad you found your scales. I'm doing a masters in cultural materials conservation, specialising in paper. Essentially conserving, preserving and restoring artworks on paper, books, parchment etc.

Got Austudy for a couple of years for one of my undergraduate degrees and found CL to be such a pain in the arse to deal with that I'd rather rely on myself than go anywhere near them again. Fingers crossed I remain in a positon where I can maintain that attitude.

Cheers

 

[uniiqueuser]

Strain it and add the juice. The point of a boil is to extract all the alpha acids. Hops have no fermentables,

This I will do, thanks for the advice. However I beg to differ (purely theoretically of course) that hops cannot be fermented. Perhaps a better way of saying it is 'hops are not easily fermentable'. A great deal of any plant is made up of cellulose which is essentially a complex sugar molecule. If you can break this molecule down far enough (eg chemically or mechanically) then yeast will consume it and create alcohol, but his would be messy, time consuming and probably not worth the effort. So perhaps the generalisation 'hops have no fermentables', may not be perfectly accurate BUT as far a brewing is concerned it is adequate.

Manticle, I hear your angst regarding CL. In our house CL is affectionately known as 'Charlie Foxtrot' and a Google search will reveal just how fitting this description is, without going into great detail or using expletives which might upset the moderators.

 

[WitWonder]

Rather than adding unknown hops to your beer, what about making some hop tea and seeing what they're like? Other more experienced brewers nearby may also be able to assist determining them from the flavour.

As others have said, due to the unknown AA content of homegrown hops (most) people use them at flameout for aroma.

 

[uniiqueuser]

I have just concocted my most elaborate brew yet:

Cascade Golden Harvest lager goo
15 grams 'Kinglake' hops
1 kg Coopers Dextrose
0.25 kg Coopers brewing sugar
Saflager 23 yeast

Starting SG 1.036

I made two fermenters full, each with the same mix.

A massive departure from my usual 44 gallon 'megaswill' where I just use 9 tins of goo, 9 or so kg of white sugar, and kit yeast. I must say it was also much more time consuming. It is also the first time (for a long time) that I took notes about the brew and actually used a hydrometer!

I know a lot of people think the Cascade kits are crap, I suppose I am going to find out! I can only justify my purchase by saying they were cheap ($3.00 a can on clearance) and I was ignorant of how bad they allegedly are.

No doubt I will do a few more 'megaswills' (lack of time is a big issue at the moment) to keep stocks up and keep these experimental brews for special occasions (ie now until the point when it is all gone!).

One suggestion I had from one forum member was to reuse the yeast cake from a 23 litre brew for a 200 litre brew, which means I will get some good mileage from that one packet of Saflager 23.

The yeast has an entirely different smell to it- kit yeast has this sort of 'sour' smell to it, but the Saflager 23, once it gets going, smells a a lot like yeasty bread.