Greater Hop Utilization

BYO has a great article on getting the most out of hops this month.

One thing in particular that caught my eye, was steeping bittering hops to extract the aroma (which gets boiled off anyways) and adding this "tea" to the secondary to increase percieved hoppiness.

Also boiling a little bit of hops in the priming solution at bottling was suggested.

I am doing a Harvest Ale with the little bit of hops that my bines produced this year.

The Hop Tea, and priming ideas appeal to me, because not all of the cones will be ready at once, and I can use fresh cones at brewing, secondary, and then bottling.

I would love for it to be an IPA, but I fear it will be a mild Pale Ale at best, so I will dump in as many as I have at each point.

There is a large thread about this here. I too am interested in the technique & plan to employ it someday.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=55721

I like the tea idea. Given that my harvest this year is smaller than last year, I'll probably be doing a Whole Harvest Ale again. So every little bit will help.

That's a fantastic idea, have the bittering hops do double duty. Given the price of hops I am certainly going to try this.

cheezydemon said:

One thing in particular that caught my eye, was steeping bittering hops to extract the aroma (which gets boiled off anyways) and adding this "tea" to the secondary to increase percieved hoppiness.

Click to expand...

Just so I'm clear on this part... steep the bittering hops in the tea then use them to bitter?

Not the same thing but I took 2 ounces I used for Dry Hopping and made a hop tea with them which I will be using to make another beer. I have about 1/2 gallon of extremely hoppy smelling/tasting liquid.

jacksonbrown said:

Just so I'm clear on this part... steep the bittering hops in the tea then use them to bitter?

Click to expand...

No, what I think he means is that since the aroma and flavor compounds are boiled off and lost during the long bittering portion of the boilm that one could steep the hops in hot water for a short time to capture some of the aroma and flavor in the steeped tea to be aded later so that the bittering hops also contribute to the flavor and aroma.

Actually I just reread your comment and you are right, I misread it at first. Yes, you would steep the bittering hops for a short time to pull out flavor and aroma into a hop "tea" then put the hops into the boil to let them do thier job bittering, reserving the tea to use later in the boil or after.

FYI...Yesterday's (8/20/2008) Basic Brewing podcast is an interview with Chris Colby about the article.

Actually the article seemed to say that you would add the tea to an already fermented batch, and then proceed to use the steeped hops to bitter a new batch, but I see no reason not to save the hop tea, refridgerated for a couple of weeks.

I can't imagine it would spoil.

don't you risk infecting the brew if you toss unsanatized hop tea that has been sitting around into the secondary?

Why wouldn't you just add the hop tea at the end of boil?

I'll have to give this a try. I've started rehydrading my whole hops before putting them in the boil, just to reduce the amount of wort lost to absorption in the hops. Next time, I'll add the leftover liquid to the kettle just before flameout.

Fermentation carries some of the flavor and aroma out of the beer. That is why people dry hop in the secondary.