How to?

[Matth]

I've been offered an opportunity to harvest some hops. Please help me. What do I do with them after they're picked?

Well duh, yes I'm going to make beer with them. My questions are about the processes, the how to.

I am an extract brewer whose only experience is with pelleted hops in muslin hop sacks. I'm not looking for recipies, I'll figure that out. I'm looking for advice about what to do with the hops after picking to get them ready for use, then how to incorporate them with a HME and possibly LME.

[Inkleg]

Have not done it myself Matt, but this may help. Hop Dry picture tutorial

What kind of hops are they?

[RickBeer]

On fiberglass filters? Interesting... You can get them cheaper than $.69 if you look hard.

If Da Yooper sees this, I'm sure he'll have good advice as he grows them.

[Inkleg]

I'm sure you could use screens also. Anything that would allow air to flow through if worried about the filters.

[DaYooper]

The commercial brewers I know tend to use fresh only for the dry hopping and aroma with a big reason being is that they are bulky and take up a lot of space. Plus, it is hard to calculate the IBUs consistantly with fresh not that it really matters that much as these tend to be specialty beers. They also rush home and immediately start their brew which between the pickup and the brewing often leads to a 36 hour day for them.

The link Inkleg posted is quite informative if you plan on drying them. I was pleased to see that I am not the only dolt who uses the microwave trick to determine moisture content. Conventional wisdom is that you do not want to heat up much more than 140F or you risk driving off the oils and such. I like to keep it somewhat cooler as the pelletizer also adds heat and my theory is the less stress the better. Thats just my theory though. For personal use I use an Excaliber food dehydrator (dang I wish this thing had spell check) on which you can set the temperature. Im not sure what temperature the generic round ones use but that could be an option. Or perhaps cracking the oven door.

I am not a fan of open air drying since the longer the cones sit wet, the more they will degrade. Does it make a huge difference? I dunno. But if that is the only option I would suggest high air flow to get it drying quickly, so would think the screen method would be the better route vs the furnace filter method (plus, I probably wouldnt want furnace filter fibers in my beer, but Im picky that way).

I have never tried this method but it was suggested to me for keeping "fresh" hops available year round. If everything has not been harvested next weekend I may try it:

1) Metal Cake Pan or High Sided Half sheet pan...
2) Spread out as many buds as you can get into a single layer.
3) Using a spray bottle, wet them down with water, turn them or stir them... wet again and freeze.
4) The coating of water will both protect and preserve them.
5) Bag them into gallon freezer bags while still frozen, squeeze out the air and return to the freezer immediately.

Whether drying or trying to preserve fresh, the key is keeping as much oxygen out as possible. I use a vacuum sealer at home and when I open a big bag I take several ounces out at a time and put in a smaller bag. That way I keep from opening my larger "stash" as many times.

The final option - and take this with a grain of salt - is to use a microwave. When we are testing for alpha we use it to bring the moisture content down to where the final product would be. We have been told by experts that this does not affect the alphas and betas and such which was my concern since a dehydrator would take way too long to get good feedback. This assumes they are dried gently (ie not exceeding 140F, maybe 30 or so seconds at a time). However, I do not know what this would do to the taste, flavor, and aroma. Unless you possibly want to do a side-by-side for future reference on a smaller batch I would probably stay clear of this and if you plan on doing this on a regular basis with a decent amount invest in a food dehydrator for any that you plan on keeping longer term.

For what its worth, many LHBSs have a hard time getting ahold of fresh and may be willing to trade fresh for pelletized but they usually need to know in advance so they can get the delivery date and the word out to their customers for same day pickup.

[duff]

Last year I used a generic food dehydrator purchased at Bed Bath & Beyond to dry my hops. It has temperature settings starting at 95f so works fairly well. I froze them after I dried them and they worked fine when I used them a few months later. Do pay attention while you are drying your hops though as it is possible to over dry them. I found that I had to pull some of the smaller ones out before the larger ones last year.

This year I used most of them wet as late hop additions and then for dry hopping.

And while I am thinking about it depending on how you use the whole hops they may cause issues with your equipment. There will be lots of little leaves that can clog up siphons, bottling wand, or spigots. I have a filter on my funnel which helps keep a lot of them out of the fermenter but just the ones from the dry hopping got into my bottling wand which made bottling day very, very, long.

The one batch I made last year using only my hops ended up way to sweet because I used my own dryed hops for all the additions and even though I picked the lowest IBU from the average Cascade hops when making the recipe they did not seem to add enough bittering. They however impart a fantastic aroma and flavor when used as late additions.

[DaYooper]

The one batch I made last year using only my hops ended up way to sweet because I used my own dryed hops for all the additions and even though I picked the lowest IBU from the average Cascade hops when making the recipe they did not seem to add enough bittering. They however impart a fantastic aroma and flavor when used as late additions.

Yup, thats exactly why most of the commercials will still use pellets at least for the bittering. Also, it is difficult to know the moisture content so you will need to use anywhere from four to six times as much as dry.

Also, clarification on freezing fresh hops (if you are so bold). They should not be thawed prior to dumping in the kettle. Freezing will cause the cell membranes to rupture - thus why you do not freeze lettuce.