Which ingredient do you hoard the most?

Hoarders - homebrewers edition.

Which do you hoard the most? Hops, yeast, or grain?

60L Crystal
Columbus & Simcoe
Washed US-05 (you can barely walk through the fridge!)

Leaf Hops. Especially when you buy several varieties cheap by the lb. and they take up all that freezer space. Think about how much you use hops in American style hoppy beers: FWH, Bitter, Middle Additions, Hopburst, Whirlpool, Hopback, and/or Dryhop.

I'm thinking a lot of people hoard 2-row and/or DME. However, I don't buy them in bulk. I plan out my recipes and buy just what I need when it comes to fermentables. I don't have a grain crusher yet so it's just more convenient for me to buy what I need instead of letting the crushed grain go stale.

Not so much yeast, unless you're washing it, capturing, or breeding it, and saving it in mason jars.

Grain, simply due to logistics. It keeps the longest. Hops keep a long time, but they slowly lose their effectiveness. You can use year-old hops, but they'll only be 50% as effective (or whatever). Grains, properly stored and not milled until you need them, are just as good on day 366 as they were on day 1.

kombat said:

Grain, simply due to logistics. It keeps the longest. Hops keep a long time, but they slowly lose their effectiveness. You can use year-old hops, but they'll only be 50% as effective (or whatever). Grains, properly stored and not milled until you need them, are just as good on day 366 as they were on day 1.

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Hops are only harvested once a year, so any hops you use right before harvesting season are going to be of the same effectiveness, whether they were purchased right after harvest or 10 months later. I would argue that this makes hoarding hops just as effective as hoarding grains, as long as they're frozen and used up right before the next harvest of hops.

Hops and hatch green chilies!

Hops....

Although I have gotten many a werid looks with my homer bucket purchases

I have a small supply of everything. I usually buy most of my grain for all my brews for the next year in one big batch so I guess right now you could say I'm hoarding grains but every grain has a specific and individual purpose so I'm not sure that's really hoarding.

I guess you could say I hoard yeast but it's probably more accurate to say I hoard strains more than hoarding volume of yeast. I used to have half a fridge shelf of nothing but mason jars of washed yeast but I've since thrown out a lot of questionable yeast and compacted my collection to vials in my frozen yeast bank. I now keep on hand some vials of washed champagne yeast for bottling sours and S04 for my English and clean beers but all the rest of my strains get washed and then make their way into frozen storage. Right now I have a Belgian strain waiting for reuse next month and a couple washed jars of strains from my ongoing yeast project but otherwise everything else is froze. Right now I have frozen 3068, 575, bottle cultured Dupont strain(s), wild yeast/bacteria and bottle cultured South Austin Golden Strong Ale belgian yeast. By next spring I'll have at least 9-10 more strains ready for the freezer.

kombat said:

[...]Hops keep a long time, but they slowly lose their effectiveness. You can use year-old hops, but they'll only be 50% as effective (or whatever).[...]

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Kept in a freezer (at 0°F) hops will maintain 90% of their AA levels after one year. I doubt that commercial hops receive that kind of storage, so hops bought in August aren't even close to that level. Thus it actually makes sense to buy big during the harvest months and husband them through the rest of the year.

I agree that uncrushed grain is the longevity king in the AG ingredients realm...

Cheers!

I'd say hops but I only have about 10 lbs in my freezer

Should be hops. A guy can not only make sure he has what he wants but also save money

I don't hoard much of anything specific, just walk through the homebrew store and see what I want to stock up on.

When my mill shows up I am going to start stockpiling grain though.

simcoe
amarillo
citra

IF AVAILABLE BUY THEM and keep 'em ready.

I can always get good fresh yeast at the homebrew shop only 10 minutes away. They can't guarantee that these hops are available year round.

Base malts (buying by the sack) and hops.

Special B (I love that stuff) and base malt