My "free" hops and a couple of questions.

The neighbor lady came over with her husband and my son tonight and helped bag and vaccum seal the hops. Burned up my old vaccum sealer and used up all of the bags.....soooo$175 bucks later for a newer better sealer and some bags the hops are ALMOST all bagged and in the freezer.
I would like to know if it is possible to OVER dry them? They are still sticky on your hands ( and all over the floor) but completely fall apart when handled now. Are they still good?

Also I made a starter from some wahed yeast a few days ago and cold crashed it to decant and pitch... been in the fridge for 2 days now....how long can I wait because I PLANNED to brew yesterday and it didn't happen....may be first of next week now.

And lastly, has anyone ever used the hose attachment on the vaccum sealers to degas wine? Is it powerful enough and how would you do it if you can?

OH YEAH ONE MORE----- I mixed up some skeeter pee a few days ago....OG right on 1.070 just like the recipe said....added the yeast cake from some apfelwein after a day, fermentation started pretty quickly checked the gravity just now and it is 1.080.. I know you guys will say not properly mixed but the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED with the last batch. Same readings even.

I'm not thinking you could over dry your hops, they should be fine. What you really want is that lupulin, if they are still sticky and not totally brown they are good.

The starter will be just fine in the fridge, just give it a little wort to wake it up the day you plan to brew.

Not sure how you would degass wine with a vacuum hose...

Gravity does not go up, unless you added some more sugar, maybe there was some sugar leftover from the yeast cake? Was your temp a lot higher than when you first took the reading?

The hops are definitely turning brown... we missed prime pickin by about a week I think..still sticky and smelly though so I think I am good

Good deal on the starter

I had heard about degassing under vaccum...thought this may do that. I know you can put one of those pumps on an opened bottle ( to remove the O2) and se bubbles coming out just from that.)

I know gravity is not SUPPOSED to go up. Thats why two times in a row seemed weird to me.... I am taking the garvity reading right in the bucket...could the bubbles coming up be "lifting" the hydrometer a bit?

Thanks for the reply

Bubbles should decrease your gravity, if anything.

SoonerDoc said:

Bubbles should decrease your gravity, if anything.

Click to expand...

OK.. I have no idea. It tyrned out great last time so I will just chalk it up to bad mixing on my part both times.