6 year old hops

So at our club homebrew meeting last night we were given a full box of NZ Cascade which had been deemed too old for use by a local mega-brewery. So apparently I have about 1.5kg of NZ Cascade with an alpha acid level of 8.1%. Now this was fully vacuum wrapped and stored properly but I'm still thinking 6 years would make them some ridiculously old hops. Beersmith thinks that now they will have an alpha acid around 1.8% but they smell really good. Should I just make a ridiculously hoppy beer and see how it goes or will I probably regret wasting money on the grains needed to make the beer? I'm thinking of an IIPA with 20% each corn sugar and crystal 20

Go for it!

I'd maybe use something different (known AA%) for your bittering addition, then do massive late additions and dry hopping with the cascades. I bet it will turn out to be delicious!

I'm with Brookdale - use for dry hopping if they smell that good.

yeah i think ill definitely give it a try, even if the alpha acids are only at 1.8% then the bitterness will around 70IBU in a 1.095 OG brew so a couple of oz of bittering hops will ensure I end up with a massive hop bomb of an IIPA. Will give it a go in the next couple of weeks

Maybe I'm way off on this, but I think that this would be a great opportunity to make a Geuze! It will require much patience (years!), but I think that this quantity of old hops is a great reason to do it, especially in a group setting where many people can share the bounty of many gallons of geuze. I would love to do it, but I can't imagine ending up with 15G of geuze a few years from now...I don't drink it that fast.

I've read that you need "aged hops" for a geuze. Some people put hops up in the hot attic for a few months to accelerate the aging process...the goal is to get less bitterness and aroma from the hops and instead to just use them as a natural beer preservative.

Anyhow, find a good geuze recipe and make a batch with the proper yeast/bacteria when you guys get a chance. Rack and store it for a year, and on the 1 year anniversary of the first brewdate, make the same recipe again. Repeat for year two. On the third anniversary, make another batch. Repeat. Four years from now, you'll have some 3 year old, some 2 and some 1 year old lambic. Carefully draw off small samples of each and taste. Blend them such that the different characteristics of each vintage complement each other without overpowering. When you have the ratio that works, blend the different vintages and bottle to 4 volumes CO2.

Good luck, I'd love to hear what you guys end up doing!

I was thinking the same as nebben. They may not be the correct hop for a sour, but they definitely meet the age requirement. I give nebben's idea my vote.

if they were nitrogen-flushed and vacuum packed in an oxygen-proof contained (like mylar) in a freezer, I'd bet that they're still perfectly usable for any purpose you'd like