How to make and brew with hop extract

Greetings... I've searched this forum and haven't found an answer to my question, perhaps because "hop extract" brings up every thread thread that mentions hops and extract!

My question is: How does one make hop extract at home, and how do you use it in your brews?

Brewers like Russian River often use hops extract in their brews. It sure seems like a great way to be able to simplify the hops additions, particularly the aroma additions.

Note: I'm not talking about hopped malt-extract.

Apologies if there are other threads on this topic... but I couldn't find them.

Hop extracts are used for 1. Bittering and 2. to lower vegetale matter in the boil kettle. I have never herd of making your own extract at home. From what i've herd is that its really sticky. Its made for bittering because it is not a specific hop, so to use for aroma seems weird to me, it is usually just some of the highest alpha rated hops around. This is what i have herd, i've been wrong before though!
Cheers!

Two different beasties: Hop extract for bittering, hop oil concentrate for aroma. Both can be made by steam extraction or using liquid CO2 under pressure. You then have to isomerize the alpha and beta acids. Concentrate the hop oils using a low-temperature distillation rig.

I've never done it, but know a bit about those ingredient that David describes perfectly.

Assuming you have Acids, then chances are they have already been isomerized. See if it says it on the label. Assuming so, there is no need to introduce them to the beginning of the boil. You should get the full level of acid (also should be on the label) at full utilization since the mechanism of isomerizing during the boil will be unnecessary.

For the oils, I'd also assume you want to add at flame out. Again, these are what you normally are extracting from the hops during your boil. No need to add heat that could blow off the volatiles.

I've never tried making it. Way too much trouble since hop extract is $30/oz and that will do a lot of bittering. I've used hop oil, mainly to perk up old IPAs and such. I use it in the glass.

I have to do something with a pack of freeze dried vacuum packed hops that has been taken out of the freezer by mistake...nice fruity hops too(Northern Brewer) type too. I've decided to make an extract under pressure...I'll lose all the aroma but should concentrate the bitterness...then i may freeze the extract as icecubes??

With the addition of hydrogen in the process makes the un-skunkable tetra hop.

hi jwatkins:

What does un-skunkable tetra hop mean to a layman?

If your beer is in UV light in clear bottles...it will NOT skunk

i thought all light was bad for brewing? brown bottles, etc...

That is the advantage of using extract oils...the hops particles that UV light activates causing skunking are avoided when using oils

david_42 said:

I've never tried making it. Way too much trouble since hop extract is $30/oz and that will do a lot of bittering. I've used hop oil, mainly to perk up old IPAs and such. I use it in the glass.

Click to expand...

where can you get it?

Google is your friend

https://morebeer.com/view_product/7835/103026/IsoHop_Bitterness_Extract_1_oz

Has anyone tried making their own extracts by simply soaking some leaf hops or whole hops in vodka for a while and shaking them from time to time? Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? That way if you add your alcohol based extract to the end of the boil or at flame out it will help to keep the wort sterile and add bitterness. Anyone got any ideas on this?

There are a lot of options out there (with new ones cropping up all the time)....the thread seems pretty well focused on the "extract" part of the question. Soaking hops in vodka or "white lightning" would technically yield you an "infusion" or a "tincture" - an interesting idea that works for a great many materials, however, I am not sure if the aroma-specific oils are alcohol-soluble (if not, you'll end up with vodka that tastes like grass and plants instead of hoppy lupulin).

To make some use of your thawed hops, the easiest approach would be to make a hop tea by boiling your hops in clean water (playing with the salt adjustments to the water, the proportion of hops to water, and the boil time will let you tune in how much aroma/bitterness the tea results in). BT recommends 2 grams of hops to 600 mL of water and to match the boil time to equivalent boil time in a recipe.

To preserve your hop tea at home cheaply, I'd recommend a box of small to medium canning jars (you can find simple canning instructions online - use your brew kettle!). If you're overly concerned about losing your aromas, subtract your immersion time for the canning from the initial boil time of the tea so the hops end up with the same amount of cooking.

On another note:
A while ago, I perfected a method of creating green tea-infused sugar that involved boiling, air dehydration, and grinding back to granules. I've gotten to the point that the resulting sugar maintains the delicate jasmine and other floral aromas without carrying through tannic bitterness. I am currently working on adapting the technique to hops. Hopefully, the end product will store well when foil-sealed and will allow for simple late hop addition or addition directly as a priming sugar. (So far, standard cane sugar is more cooperative than brewers' dextrose....still working on adapting that...)

I'm wondering if these experiments went anywhere. There's another thread over here too. I was thinking of trying to do some extracts in canning jars using a pressure cooker.

I want to try to make two sorts of extract. One that would be an ISO-Alpha extract. This seems to be easier. I can add some hops to a canning jar and pressure cook it for 30 minutes or so. I figure I may need to drop the ph of the water a bit with some lactic or phosphoric acid to get better utilization right? Any idea what the maximum % ISO alpha acid I'd be able to achieve without any exotic solvents?

The hop oils/flavor seem to be a trickier matter. I'm guessing that they'd just boil off into the atmosphere of the pressure cooker. I'm pretty sure that you can't completely seal jars before processing them and expect them to survive.

Obviously Hexane and CO2 are not great choices as an at home solvent for hop oils or alpha acids. I could obviously dose up the liquid in the canning jars with ethanol. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with this?

I was hoping to do some sort of mixology exercise/contest with the homebrew club. It would be cool to show up with a few base beers (High FG, low FG, high alcohol, low alcohol, chocolaty, roasty, toasty) and then a few different hop oils plus an iso-alpha extract and let everyone offer a beer that resulted from a mix of these ingredients.

This thread also looks very interesting. He makes an aroma distillation. I will almost certainly give this a try and report back.

-Anthony

AnthonyCB said:

I'm wondering if these experiments went anywhere. There's another thread over here too. I was thinking of trying to do some extracts in canning jars using a pressure cooker.

I want to try to make two sorts of extract. One that would be an ISO-Alpha extract. This seems to be easier. I can add some hops to a canning jar and pressure cook it for 30 minutes or so. I figure I may need to drop the ph of the water a bit with some lactic or phosphoric acid to get better utilization right? Any idea what the maximum % ISO alpha acid I'd be able to achieve without any exotic solvents?

The hop oils/flavor seem to be a trickier matter. I'm guessing that they'd just boil off into the atmosphere of the pressure cooker. I'm pretty sure that you can't completely seal jars before processing them and expect them to survive.

Obviously Hexane and CO2 are not great choices as an at home solvent for hop oils or alpha acids. I could obviously dose up the liquid in the canning jars with ethanol. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with this?

I was hoping to do some sort of mixology exercise/contest with the homebrew club. It would be cool to show up with a few base beers (High FG, low FG, high alcohol, low alcohol, chocolaty, roasty, toasty) and then a few different hop oils plus an iso-alpha extract and let everyone offer a beer that resulted from a mix of these ingredients.

Click to expand...

This might be helpful to you. I use to make thc extracts using quintuple filtered butane and putting the herbs in a PVC pipe with both ends closed with tiny holes and then let it boil out for a few minutes. It should boil out in room temperature. I'm not 100% sure this is safe for beer but butane has a very low boiling point and should get completely evaporated. Different than doing hops but if you really wanna try to make ure own extracts this might work.