Would this idea work?

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KayaBrew

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I want to add a blast of hop flavor to an IPA before bottling and I was thinking of boiling up 2 cups of water and my priming sugar, then at "flameout" adding an ounce or so of Cascades. Then I'd let them steep before adding the solution to my beer. Yay or nay?
 
Just throw some hops in your secondary for 5-7 days before you bottle. It's called dry hopping and works really well for what you want.
 
Actually, I'm dry hopping this beer right now. I'm looking to get a bit more hop flavor rather that just aroma. That's why I thought of doing hop "tea".
 
Just throw some hops in your secondary for 5-7 days before you bottle. It's called dry hopping and works really well for what you want.

Dryhopping doesn't add any hop FLAVOR, just aroma. There's no alpha acids being isomerized so no flavor is going in.

Kaya, you're not the first person that's contemplated it or done it. Or flavored their priming sugar with ginger, or cinnamon or other spices. I've done it. It will work.

Are you gonna strain them before dumping the solution in? I would. Just let the whole shebang steep. In fact boil your solution, then after a couple minutes boiling. Turn the flame off, throw a lid on the solution, and let it cool for 15 minutes or so, that way any of the aroma oils should fall back into the solution as condensate.
 
This actually seems like a pretty clever way to reclaim some of the IBUs lost during fermentation.
 
Dryhopping doesn't add any hop FLAVOR, just aroma. There's no alpha acids being isomerized so no flavor is going in.

Kaya, you're not the first person that's contemplated it or done it. Or flavored their priming sugar with ginger, or cinnamon or other spices. I've done it. It will work.

Are you gonna strain them before dumping the solution in? I would. Just let the whole shebang steep. In fact boil your solution, then after a couple minutes boiling. Turn the flame off, throw a lid on the solution, and let it cool for 15 minutes or so, that way any of the aroma oils should fall back into the solution as condensate.

Cool. I was planning on straining out the hops before adding to the bottling bucket. I like the idea of letting them steep with a lid on the pot. Thanks for the idea.
 
would you have to add more sugar/water than usual to make up for hop absorbtion? also, how do you strain it effectively without splashing and potentially causing a bit of oxidation? I have never tried this method but it's intriguing...
 
No, I wouldn't add more sugar. THere's no way to know how much would get soaked up....add a random amount of sugar and you're asking for bottle bombs. Just give the hops in the strainer a squeeze with the back of the spoon and fuhgettaboutit.
 
Finally getting around to doing this. I'll report back for anyone interested in a few weeks when the beer is carbed. For the record, I steeped 2 oz. of pellet hops in 3 cups of priming solution. In hindsight, 3 cups (24oz) of water was probably not enough. I'm curious to see if enough sugar made it into the beer to carb it. The hops soaked up a lot more of the liquid than I had anticipated.
 
I did a priming hop addition for a brown ale and an IPA that I recently bottled and I believe that it is worth while. It increased the apparent bitterness significantly for the brown ale. Boiling the hops in the priming solution allows the alpha-acids to isomerize thus imparting bitterness which you cannot get from dry hopping. Hope this is useful!
 
Dryhopping doesn't add any hop FLAVOR, just aroma. There's no alpha acids being isomerized so no flavor is going in.

Kaya, you're not the first person that's contemplated it or done it. Or flavored their priming sugar with ginger, or cinnamon or other spices. I've done it. It will work.

Are you gonna strain them before dumping the solution in? I would. Just let the whole shebang steep. In fact boil your solution, then after a couple minutes boiling. Turn the flame off, throw a lid on the solution, and let it cool for 15 minutes or so, that way any of the aroma oils should fall back into the solution as condensate.

Dry hopping doesn't add any flavor? I disagree with this whole heartily. Aroma and flavor are tied together. Isomerizing humulone and cohumulone (alpha acids) aren't the only source of flavor. There are over two hundred flavor compounds in hops. Most of which aren't alpha or beta acids. Sure, some are oils and may not dissolve completely, but in my experience, flavor and aroma are the most important reason for dry hopping.

I like to do something similar to Firestone Walker and do 2 dry hopping sessions where the hops are in contact with the beer for 3 or 4 days each time. Make sure the hops are aromatic and not dull before dry hopping.
 
I'm actually trying this on a split batch of pale ale (i split the batch and used US-05 on half and Belle Saison on the other half) as we speak. When i made the wort, i tried out a new nylon hop bag, that i think "ate" a lot of the hop flavor and bitterness for me.

I pulled half a gallon or so from each fermenter and brought it to a boil with the priming sugar, added the hops at flameout and it's now steeping for 30 minutes before bottling. I used the beer instead of water to mimic hop/wort conditions as opposed to hop/water conditions. I'll report back when it's tasting time!
 
Also, some people play with tinctures of hops and vodka to create and extract. Freezing can concentrate it I believe. Oils should be alcohol soluble.

I know a wide viarity of extract techniques for the cousin. I've never thought of trying them out for hop extracts. I'm gonna experiment a little. Thanks for the post!

Sorry for the hyjack OP.
 
Bringing this back from the dead. I am attempting a grapefruit IPA and was debating whether to add the zest in when i dry hop, or to infuse the priming sugar with zest before bottling.

Opinions either way? Do both?
 
Posting as an update in case anyone searches and finds this thread. I tried to grapefruit an IPA by infusing grapefruit zest in to the priming sugar. while the dredges of the priming bucket tasted promising, the results after a week in the bottle were dissappointing. i did the zest of 2 grapefruit in to the sugar, which was maybe not enough grapefruit??? next time i will probably double the amount of GF in the priming sugar, in addition to putting zest in a dry hop step.
 
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