Wild Hops

[esssee]

Hi guys,

Made a new contact on the weekend who informs me that he has a large number of Wild Hop Plants on his property. He is going to send me some of his next harvest to trial.

Just a few questions:

1. Is there any way that you can identify different hop varieties by sight?

2. More generally, what weight in hop flowers equates to a gram of pellets of the same type?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Bongchitis]

Cool. I am sure varieties have particular traits but characteristics will be different for different growing conditions and thus make it difficult to ID.

I would say a gram of hops is a gram of hops, just the flowers will take up more space. I have read though that pellets are slightly more effective as they have been chopped up and thus the goodies are more easily extracted.

 

[benno1973]

Generally the rule is 10% more flowers than pellets for the same bitterness. Not that you'll know the bitterness of the wild hops - it'll all be a bit of guesswork. There's a few threads on here somewhere that discuss how to make an educated guess at the AA% of homegrown hops such as this one.

 

[adryargument]

Cool. I am sure varieties have particular traits but characteristics will be different for different growing conditions and thus make it difficult to ID.

I would say a gram of hops is a gram of hops, just the flowers will take up more space. I have read though that pellets are slightly more effective as they have been chopped up and thus the goodies are more easily extracted.

Also be aware that you will need to dry them.
1kg of wet flowers is like 200-300 grams of dry from my understanding.

 

[jayse]

Are they actually hop plants growing wildly? I ask this because there are various plants known as 'wild hops' which have no relation at all to the hops we use in beer.

 

[Malted]

Are they actually hop plants growing wildly? I ask this because there are various plants known as 'wild hops' which have no relation at all to the hops we use in beer.

None of the below are any good for brewing.


A weed that is called Wild Hops LINKY

Australian National Herbarium, Common Names of Australian Plants Database- all of these are called 'wild hops': Dodonaea viscosa ssp. viscosa, Nicandra physalodes, Acetosa vesicaria, Nicandra physalodes.



But hey if the fellah has hop plants growing wild (Humulus lupus), then yehaaaaa for you!

 

[Wolfy]

1. Is there any way that you can identify different hop varieties by sight?

Not that I am aware of, the same species of hop can look different depending on where and how it is grown, without lab-type-analysis the only way that I know is if you brew with them and then hope that the hops have distinct characteristics that you can identify.
However, if they are not actually 'wild' hops, but rather hops that were planted some time in the past and then left untended you may be able to find what hops were grown at that location in the past and identify them that way.