Wow. I forgot to add the hops. ...wow

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jeremydgreat

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DOH! Yeah, so I look on my kitchen table today and notice a small bag of hops sitting there and my heart sank.... what kind of brewer forgets to add the HOPS? :mad:

Anyway- here's the recipe I was making: Haerfest Spiced Apple Ale.

I started fermenting on Sunday, and it's tuesday morning. When I realized my mistake, I opened the carboy and tossed in .75oz of the 1oz bag of Hallertau hops. The little pellets were sitting on top of the krausen so I shook the carboy a bit to get them to fall down into liquid.

Anyhoo... pretty bummed. Thoughts? Should I do anything else or am I about to have 5 gallons of gross beer?

PS- I don't advise brewing while slightly drunk.
 
i read somewhere on hee you can make a hop tea .. never done it, but it's probably worth seaching ... i hate it when that kind of thing happens ... havent done it with beer yet, but i sure have with cooking .. good luck
 
May taste more like a wine than a beer. Boiling the hops releases their bitterness into the beer to counter the sweetness of the sugars from the grains. Just tossing them into the fermenter will add some aroma, but that is it. There may be something you can add to the fermenter to reduce the sweetness a little. You might even be able to boil some hops to make a bitter "tea" and add that, but I would wait for some more responses as I've never encountered this problem.
 
I've never run into this problem but maybe you could boil up a small amount of water at peak utilization gravities (something like 1.035-1.055 IIRC) and boil your hops in there, then transfer over? I'm sure someone will shoot that idea down if it's stupid but that's my first thought.
 
You know what else I just realized? In my panic I dumped the .75oz of Hallertau hops into 65 degree beer... without sanitizing them. Hopefully they come fairly sanitized in the baggy. GEEZ! What a nooby.
 
you don't need to sanitize hops, most of us routinely dump hops into beer without any type of sanitization when we dry hop. So no worries about that.

I've never forgot the hops, but I'd suggest a hop tea also.. better than nothing...
 
Hops dont need to be sanitized. People do this all the time. It actually has properties to preserve beer, but that's probably unrelated as to why they dont carry the critters that spoil beer.

The best thing would have been to boil the hops for a little bit, strain, and pour that green bitter water into the beer.

What was your full recipe?
 
Hmmm, I have never had this happen but what about pulling a gallon off now and boiling it up for 45-60 mins, cooling and then adding back to the fermenter since it has only been a couple of days?

I am sure you could calculate the hop additions to get the bitternes up to what you need! Any remaining sugars should still ferment and any alcohol in the beer may be lost but what the heck!!

Just an idea!
 
Make a second beer in the same style with twice as much hops and mix them together.

No idea if that would work, so don't take me seriously... but I'm curious to see what more experienced brewers come up with, just in case this ever happens to me (since I'm perfectly capable of forgetting just about anything).
 
I made a hop tea with the remaining .25oz of hops. With .75 sitting on the krausen and my .25oz of "hop tea" think that would do the trick?

Considering running down to the brew supply store and grabbing another .5oz of Hallertau hops to add to the tea. I'm just not sure that .75oz of hops sitting on the krausen is going to do much good (other than adding aroma).

By the way- thank you all for your help!
 
Make a second beer in the same style with twice as much hops and mix them together.

No idea if that would work, so don't take me seriously... but I'm curious to see what more experienced brewers come up with, just in case this ever happens to me (since I'm perfectly capable of forgetting just about anything).

I would go with this one of all the choices presented thus far. Unless you just do not want that much beer of this particular style, then I would test the gravity and if it hasnt dropped too much, pull a gallon and boil for an hour with the hops (you will probably need to pick up more hops).
 
i've been thinking of purposely doing this and not carbing the "beer" and see what happens after awhile... does sound quite interesting though!
 
I'll let you know how it eventually turns out Rivenin. haha. I'm trying to chill out about this mistake, but 1) it's like $50 in ingredients for that recipe and 2) I was hoping to have it done for a housewarming party with some friends. No time for a do-over.
 
Won't it be fun to offer this to your guests??

I would not start running around willy nilly doing anything and everything and tossing hops in like magic dust.

You'd already added some aroma hops, and possibly a bit a flavor. Either make another strong beer and mix, or just make up a tea and add it. It may be hard to guess how much you'll need, but I can say with a bit of confidence, that anything will be better than nothing, and it may be hard to get to much from a couple of cups of tea.
 
As a quick follow-up: This was my first truly bad batch of beer. :) I called it "sour" apple beer.

I did a little tasting party with about 10 people and, oddly, one person thought it was fine and another person said it was their favorite or the 4 beers we tasted. Now I know not to waste my bests stuff on them, because that stuff was not good. hehe.
 
Yeah. I mean, it's no lip-shriveling sour, but it definitely has this fairly unpleasant bite at the finish. I'm not sure what oxidized bear tastes like, but it wasn't WRANK. Just, kinda had an unpleasant "twang" to it. I think adding all those dried hops and then my hop-tea was just too much.

Disaster of a beer.
 
I've never run into this problem but maybe you could boil up a small amount of water at peak utilization gravities (something like 1.035-1.055 IIRC) and boil your hops in there, then transfer over? I'm sure someone will shoot that idea down if it's stupid but that's my first thought.

I would basically do the same. Do a mini boil to get the bittering you need. You may not end up with the ideal IBU's but at least you'll get some. You could do it with or without DME or LME although it might water you beer down a tad. Although if you do a 2qt boil and boil down to 1qt the difference wouldn't be perceivable.

All a hop tea will do is add flavor and aroma. It will add a very minute amount of IBU's although that could changed based upon the temp of the water you steep in.

For future reference ALWAYS write/print out the process and timeline for whatever you are brewing and reference it. It is no different than baking etc. Would you bake a cake without having the recipe to reference?

With everything going on during a brew day it is easy to forget something. Having that recipe prevents that. You don't want all your hard work to be for naught.


ETA- Good thing I noticed this was an old thread. DOH!
 
I thought a hop tea would bitter. Is this not the case? If you want flavor and aroma, why not just dryhop?
 
Yeah I'm all for the hop tea idea. Or making a second beer of the same style doubling up the hops and mixing the two.
 
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