how do you derate acids in aged hops?

i'm brewing a "plambic" on monday and struggling with hops.

picked up 2 oz of opened, frozen and two year old hallertau and 1 oz of sealed, 4 year old pearle, also frozen.

they're now sitting in my oven at 200F and will be there for two hours.

i want to use both and toss the pearle in (1.0 oz) at 60 min and the hallertau (2.0 oz) at 15 but want to make sure my BUs are no more than about 14 (i know, high, but that's what i want)

i'm derating the acids across the board at 2/3rds... am i way off track?

If you are pitching cultures I would just use plain old un-aged hops with a single addition near the start of the boil to get ~10 IBUs. The only reason copious amounts of aged hops are used traditionally is to stave off Lactobacillus during the slow natural cooling so the pH doesn't drop too far for the Saccharomyces (if you are force chilling and pitching yeast, this isn't an issue).

Hops are really never added to Lambics in the last hour of the boil, in fact most Lambics are boiled for several hours after the hops are added.

I've got some hops aging for my first attempt at a spontaneous fermentation, it will be interesting to see what if any character they provide.

i am pitching a culture into a cooled wort... thanks for the info - i'm planning a long boil (120 minutes) - i'm going to kind of split the difference and see what happens... fun!

hopunion has aged pellets right now.
i got 5 pounds.

jtakacs said:

i'm brewing a "plambic" on monday and struggling with hops.

picked up 2 oz of opened, frozen and two year old hallertau and 1 oz of sealed, 4 year old pearle, also frozen.

they're now sitting in my oven at 200F and will be there for two hours.

i want to use both and toss the pearle in (1.0 oz) at 60 min and the hallertau (2.0 oz) at 15 but want to make sure my BUs are no more than about 14 (i know, high, but that's what i want)

i'm derating the acids across the board at 2/3rds... am i way off track?

Click to expand...

turn off the oven and go for it