Harvest Ale Ideas

I plan on using my first year cascades, wet, in a harvest ale. I won't be derailed on that.


I planned to do a real pale ale with 8 lbs or so of 2 row and English Ale yeast.

(I have the yeast already harvested)

I wanted a simple plain beer so that I could really appreciate the hop flavor.

I will end up with maybe an ounce and a half. (dried equivelant)

That is all fine, but it sounds a little dull. Should I stick with that plan, or has anyone else got suggestions of a better Harvest Ale?

Couldn't you just reduce the batch size a little? Say from 5 to 4 gallons gets you a little less beer in the end but it would allow the hops to come out more. Or I guess you could just supplement with a little extra cascade you have laying around. Your hops would still be the majority of the hops in the beer.

Maybe 1/4 lb of C60L for a little contrast. There's a discussion about making a hop tea from the bittering hops to preserve the aroma/flavor. Nothing more than steeping the bittering hops in a pint of boiling water for 10 minutes, then pouring the water off and cooling it. It gets added back into the chilled wort.

david_42 said:

Maybe 1/4 lb of C60L for a little contrast. There's a discussion about making a hop tea from the bittering hops to preserve the aroma/flavor. Nothing more than steeping the bittering hops in a pint of boiling water for 10 minutes, then pouring the water off and cooling it. It gets added back into the chilled wort.

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Right on! I think you are referring to my thread on that. I fully intend to!

Aren't you worried about contamination. I know you have to be careful and it can be done but it increases the chances of collecting a small amt of nasties which can be a major issue! How are you going to control that?

- WW

Hops are a preservative, but I guess there is a chance.

david_42 said:

Maybe 1/4 lb of C60L for a little contrast. There's a discussion about making a hop tea from the bittering hops to preserve the aroma/flavor. Nothing more than steeping the bittering hops in a pint of boiling water for 10 minutes, then pouring the water off and cooling it. It gets added back into the chilled wort.

Click to expand...

cheezydemon said:

Right on! I think you are referring to my thread on that. I fully intend to!

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Hope you have better luck with that than I did. Tried it twice and both times it tasted liked fresh mowed lawn

After more research I've discovered you can't isomerize the alpha acids in the hops without the components of the malt present in the boil, so in effect you'd get no utilization at all. It's the kind of same reason hops don't skunk in sunlight but hopped beer does, it's all about the isomerization of the hops and that requires boiling and the malt together.
You might be able to do it with a little DME in your steeping water, but I've never tried that.

cheezydemon said:

Hops are a preservative, but I guess there is a chance.

Click to expand...

They are a natural preservative but couldn't they carry wild bacteria if they are not pasteurized in the boil or hot wort?

One of the reasons I don't dry hop. I know I sound paranoid and the chances are small, but there is still a chance...

"What are the chances of you and me, you know...."

"Like one in a million...."

"So........ you're saying I have a chance!"

- WW

It is almost impossible to infect fermented beer. Almost.

That is why dry hopping has never (any who object speak now...) resulted in an infection.


Would isomerization occur in merely hot water?

The BYO article did specify to use a little DME. I would almost certainly have forgotten that! Thanks for the reminder.

cheezydemon said:

It is almost impossible to infect fermented beer. Almost.

That is why dry hopping has never (any who object speak now...) resulted in an infection.


Would isomerization occur in merely hot water?

The BYO article did specify to use a little DME. I would almost certainly have forgotten that! Thanks for the reminder.

Click to expand...

The other reason that just came to me is to get full utilization of the hops they are boiled 60 minutes. To acheive the same results with a 10 minute steep is going to require a lot of hops

Willie3 said:

They are a natural preservative but couldn't they carry wild bacteria if they are not pasteurized in the boil or hot wort?

One of the reasons I don't dry hop. I know I sound paranoid and the chances are small, but there is still a chance...

Click to expand...

Bacteria are everywhere. Bugs too. The don't clean all the bugs off the hops when they harvest them. If there are bug in/on the hops when harvested, there's a good chance they are still in there. Homegrown or commercial for that matter, all nice and neatly vacuum packed. The low pH of a fermented beer is not condusive for the growth of most bacteria, add in the hop's antibacterial properties and it is not a major concern. Of all the places one could infect a beer, this is the least likely step.

I just brewed an IPA yesterday that used 8 oz of wet hops at 10 min and another 8 oz at flameout. We had just picked them minutes earlier, bugs and all (I didn't see any, but I can't imagine that there weren't any). I'm going to be dry hopping this beer in a week or so with more of my homegrown hops and I'm not worried about contamination.

Nice! Thanx for the tips and info on dryhopping. Let me know how it turns.

- WW

Harvest Ale bubbling away!

Apologies if I'm not supposed to jump in on this thread with a question, but here goes. I'd like to use my 1st year crop of cascade hops in a 5 gallon batch of Ale this month. Can anyone tell me the volume of whole leaves that compares with pellet weight?

3pks said:

Apologies if I'm not supposed to jump in on this thread with a question, but here goes. I'd like to use my 1st year crop of cascade hops in a 5 gallon batch of Ale this month. Can anyone tell me the volume of whole leaves that compares with pellet weight?

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If you dry your hops well, the weights will be the same, pellet hops are just ground up wholw hops.

Myformula was as follows:

Throw the entire amount of first year hops into the boiling wort. However bitter it gets is all you will get.

Sorry, but I actually did not want to weigh my meager harvest.

I used pilsen malt for the first time on a whim, and some fresh hops.

You can taste a little bitterness, just right for an apa, that pilsen malt is delicious!!!

Wow! definitely a good beer.

It should be noted that I stopped at about 3 gallons to accentuate what hops I had.

Glad I did!

:cheers: