Unfortunate Confirmation...

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JohnnyO

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Just a thread to confirm that it's not a good idea to use your homegrown hops to bitter your beer. :(

I brewed a pale ale using my homegrown cascade and centennial hops. I used fresh hops, just picked off the bines. I used a 5:1 ratio for weight.

The aroma is very good, the flavor is like a grassy bouquet of flowers, and there is very very little bitterness. It's basically undrinkable. I'm hoping it improves, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
Sorry, but while one may never know the precise AA% of his/her home grown hops, they actually can be used for all phases of brewing - if they're good hops, that is. My Chinooks have consistently run in the ball park of commercial AA%, starting with the first year harvest, and are fabulous for bittering. I use ~20% more than "store bought" Chinook and the results are empirically very close...

Cheers!
 
I believe the main reason people avoid using their homegrown hops for bittering, is because they are unsure of thier potency. Almost any hop (correct me if im wrong) will have the same affect when used for 60 minutes. By this I mean the flavor and aroma qualities are lost/boiled out. They will only impart bitterness. How much bitterness is determined by the potency of the hops. Homegrown hops tend to have a lower Alpha Acid than do commercial hops of the same variety. So, it is better to use a commercial for bittering, because you have a firm grasp on thier bittering potential, and use your homegrown hops for late addition, flameout, and dry hopping to make best use of thier fresh flavor and aroma. I just brewed my first homegrown IPA yesterday and I used 2 OZ of Warrior (storebought) for bittering, and the rest were Columbus Hops.

:mug:
 
I don't typically use homegrown hops for bittering, but in the last couple of beers I have and they've come out great. I dry them first though, as I'm not a fan of the grassy/vegetal flavor I pick up from wethopped beers.

The beer I'm drinking now was hopbursted with all homegrown (newly dried) hops from this year.

The hops schedule for 10 gallons was:
4.00 oz Cascade (Homegrown) Boil 20.0 min
2.00 oz Centennial Hops (Homegrown) Boil 15.0 min
2.00 oz Chinook (Homegrown) Boil 10.0 min
2.00 oz Cascade (Homegrown) Boil 5.0 min
2.00 oz Centennial Hops (Homegrown) Steep 0.0 min
2.00 oz Chinook (Homegrown) Aroma Steep 0.0 min
 
Thanks for the encouragement, folks.

I'll certainly use them for flavor and aroma stl, but I'm not likely to use them for bittering again anytime soon on a five gallon batch. Possibly on a one gallon batch, using dried hops.
 
In three years I've never wet hopped, with my home-growns or anything else. I prefer to let the compound most associated with "grassiness" to dissipate during the drying process.

Wrt to wet-hopped brews, I've read that the grassiness will subside with time, but obviously bitterness isn't going to increase on its own. I would brew up a strong hop tea and add it to taste. One could draw a pint of the weak sauce, measure in some tea (probably by the teaspoon), note the amount needed to bring the pint up to snuff, then do the math to determine how much tea is needed for the batch.

A couple of dry ounces of your favorite bittering hop simmered in a quart of water for an hour would be a good start...

Cheers!
 
I had the same problem -- really wanted to make an all-homegrown hops beer, and it has ZERO bitterness. Also virtually no hop flavor or aroma, despite using nearly two lbs of wet Nugget hops (mostly late-boil). I'm thinking I just harvested too soon; they smelled great, but almost no hops presence in the beer. I doctored the finished beer with a hop tea, but it pretty much sucks, and will probably be a dumper.
 
I have a batch in fermenter, using home grown Newport hops as bitterness.
Don't know the exact AA%, obviously, but taste tests seem to indicate good amount of bittering.
Second year on the bines, first time actually getting anything out of them. I ended up with a pound or so of wet hops, 4 oz or so dried.
 
The aroma is very good, the flavor is like a grassy bouquet of flowers, and there is very very little bitterness. It's basically undrinkable. I'm hoping it improves, but I'm not holding my breath.

Sounds like a beer that i would love, send it my way would ya.

Cheers :mug:
 
I wonder if you make a hop tea before you try them in an actual brew would help you determine if they will be good for bittering or just aroma? That way if next year comes you don't just dismiss them as not being good.
 
Homegrown hops can be successfully used for bittering and can have the same "effect" as commercial grown hops provide you do everything correctly.

The first problem is that the typical homegrower harvests way too early. They look at the big, green cone and think "how beautiful". They can't wait to get it into a beer. The reality is that the alpha acids (bittering compounds) are some of the last things to develop in the cone. So if the cones are picked early, the oils and aroma may be there but the bittering isn't. When some of our growers jump the gun and harvest a week or two early, we see alpha's drop from an expected 6% to something like 1% for example. That little bit of time really matters.

The second problem is that home growers don't always dry to the same level as commercial growers. Commercial growers have to get below 12% to pelletize and most shoot for 10% or less. Most home grown stuff I have sampled is still in the 15 to 20% range or more. This doesn't sound like much but a 4 oz sample dried to 10% contains 0.4 oz water. A 4 oz sample dried to 20% contains .8 oz of water. In other words, if your recipe called for 4 oz of hops for bittering and you used 4 oz of the 20% moisture content hops, you would be getting 12% less alpha than the 10% moisture content hops your recipe assumes you are using. Make sense?

The final problem is in water/fertilizer application and weather. I'm amazed at how drastically hop chemistry can be effected by small changes in their growing conditions.

I like allynlyon's suggestion of making a hop tea to see if the bittering potential is there before you use it to brew. That may save you from having to dump a future batch.
 
Thanks again guys for the further education on this. I am sure I harvested too early considering GVH_Dans comments above.

I'll have to use the rest of this years harvest for aromatics and some flavor in future batches. I'll also have to use more restraint next season. ;)
 
I made an all homegrown pale ale with my hops this year and it turned out perfect. I dried the hops and they were stored under vacuum in the freezer for about 2 weeks before being used. I used 0.25 oz of chinook to bitter and the other 4 oz of additions were at 15 minutes or less of Columbus and galena. The bitterness is right where a pale should be. In my software I made the assumption of using the middle of the range of average alpha acid and that seems to be good for my hops. I would say don't give up, but try again with some properly dried homegrown hops and see what results you get.
 
The aroma is very good, the flavor is like a grassy bouquet of flowers, and there is very very little bitterness. It's basically undrinkable. .

I wonder, grassy-ness and low bitterness is usually an indicator that the hops weren't finished on the bines.

I often use my own hops for bittering as well as aroma. I've used quite a variety of hops to bitter.

Edit: Sorry didn't see that Dan addressed this. Homegrown hops do bitter just as good as commercial. Dan's suggestions will help!
 
I wonder, grassy-ness and low bitterness is usually an indicator that the hops weren't finished on the bines.

I often use my own hops for bittering as well as aroma. I've used quite a variety of hops to bitter.

Edit: Sorry didn't see that Dan addressed this. Homegrown hops do bitter just as good as commercial. Dan's suggestions will help!

I think you're right. I was likely very premature in harvesting. I believe I did that brew at the end of August/beginning of September. I'm likely harvesting too soon. In my mind, I used an ample amount of hops. I believe it was something along the lines of 5.5oz wet centennial at 60 minutes. It should certainly have more bitterness than it does. In the end, it was essentially a pillowcase full of hops that I pulled out at the end of the boil.

Lesson learned.

Next year, I'll wait to harvest until late in the season, and do a test batch, using all dried hops.
 
This was my 3rd year of growing and I've always used the homegrown high AAU varieties for bittering. Like others, I discount them 15-20% to be safe, but I'm also using them in IPAs so the more the merrier.
I'm also less than attentive during drying (i.e. they typically dry for several weeks before I get back to them to vacuum pack so they may be drier than desired).
Don't be afraid to bitter with homegrown as long as you let them reach maturity.
Also, make sure the bags you are using for whole leaf allow enough wort movement through. My 2nd batch with whole leaf I used too fine of a hop bag and it trapped the oils such that the utilization was lacking.
 
A one gallon batch with a simple malt profile is a good way to test the bittering potential of your home grown hops.

I always assume my hops are about 20% weaker in terms of AA% than the average and design the recipe to shoot for the median IBUs for that style.

With that being said, my fist homegrown hop brew this year was a 5 gallon batch.
 
GVH_Dan said:
Homegrown hops can be successfully used for bittering and can have the same "effect" as commercial grown hops provide you do everything correctly. The first problem is that the typical homegrower harvests way too early. They look at the big, green cone and think "how beautiful". They can't wait to get it into a beer. The reality is that the alpha acids (bittering compounds) are some of the last things to develop in the cone. So if the cones are picked early, the oils and aroma may be there but the bittering isn't.

I think this is pretty much what I did. I really didn't get much flavor or aroma, either, though. Mine was an all-Nugget wet hop; a hop I don't have much experience with. Kind of a big flop all round. I was kind of shocked that nearly 2 lbs of wet hops left so little impact on my beer, but I'll chalk it up as a learning experience. Fortunately I have no shortage of homebrew queued up still!
 
That is rather discouraging information. What conditions makes for successful home grown hops?
 
A good overall resource is: http://www.crannogales.com/HopsManual.pdf ...go to Harvest Time (pg 29) concerning when to harvest.

I like to look at the hops to test.

1. Take a hop, squeeze it and it should spring back into shape immediately.

2. Then I open the hop from the top down and I take a look at the color and amount of lupulin. I'm usually looking for the yellow lupulin to start to turn towards a yellow-orange color. Different hops hold different amounts ...eg: Hallertau less then Cascades. It is tricky sometimes ..if you wait too long, they can go "cheesy" on you and you don't want that.

3. Then I usually rub the hop between my hands really fast to warm up the lupulin and smell it. The smell should be quite noticeable, appropriate to the hop type, and my hands should be nice and sticky form the lupulin.
 
That is rather discouraging information. What conditions makes for successful home grown hops?

Don't be discouraged. See it as a challenge. Heck, it took me a decade before I started growing tomatoes I was proud of and hops are way more complex than hops.

If nothing else, use commercial hops for bittering and your homegrown hops for late addition. Even if you aren't picking at peak "bittering", its really easy to smell if they are ready to be picked for oil and aroma.
 
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