4 year old frozen hop pellets.

Toss them or use them? Amarillo

Thx.

if there sealed use them

depends what you are using them for, if they smell good, I would certainly use them for late additions. The question mark is their bittering abilities really.

as a reference, I just used some leaf hops from '09 and were not treated well before I got them, meaning they were in a room, in a zip lock for at least a month before I got them ( I had a friend that was a hop farmer that pulled a few pounds from each crop for me and then sent the lump sum) at any rate I was hesitant to use them but I just did recently on a simple pale and man they still have a punch.

Use them. Find a hop aging calculator (BeerSmith has one), and figure out how much they have deteriorated and adjust for that. The calculator is for bittering, but I would adjust a similar amount for flavor and aroma too; the worst that can happen is you get 'too' much hop flavor and/or aroma.

I just checked BeerSmith. Amarillo will lose 15% AAs in 48 months when vacuum sealed and stored at 0 F. I'd probably just use 20% more than normal to account for the aging.

Pellets tend to keep better than leaf too.

The old smell test is the way to go. I've thrown out hops that were not that old due to improper handling. Just not worth it imho.

Here is an update. I stopped brewing 4 years ago, for various reasons, and it just so happened I received a big hop order during the hop crisis of 2008. All hops were vacuumed sealed in two ounces and marked with type, date, and AA%. I put all of these and two dried Nottingham Yeast packets with exp. date of August 2007 in a grocery bag and tied that up and placed in the freezer until bitten by the home brew bug again recently.

17.5 oz Amarillo Pellet Hops at 8% AA
14.0 oz Cascade Pellet Hops at 4.9% AA
2.0 oz Magnum Pellet Hops at 14.9% AA
2.0 oz Columbus Pellet Hops at 6.3% AA
2 Nottingham Dried Yeast Packets exp August 2007

Can someone please use Beersmith to get the AA loss?
Is the Nottingham yeast still good?

Thanks a lot.

Like others have mentioned, how useful they are will also depend on how they were stored. If you had them in a frost-free freezer they've likely been compromised more than if they were in a deep freezer. That said, I made an IPA not long ago with almost all hops leftover from previous brews. They ranged in age from a couple years to a month and all packages had been opened. I did the "smell test" on all of them, some of which didn't pass. The beer turned out great though.

Make a barleywine.