Hop tea and wild hops

There are quite a few hop bines growing around the edges of some timber my family has. Last year I dried some, but then never actually did anything with them because I always had other beers already picked out and didn't have a use for them.

I decided to pick some off the same bine today. This time I tried boiling them in water, just to see what they are like. After boiling for about 40 minutes I noticed the water was this bright pinkish-red color. I tried a little and it was definitely bitter. Has anyone ever done this before with wet hops--boiled them in 1.000 water and gotten a red product? I was figuring on brown/tan, not red!

Nope I've never tried boiling hops. But it should be a good method for checking their flavo and bitterness. You can dry them and put one cone (weigh it) in a pot with 500ml of water, do the same with a med/low AA hop from the LHBS. You can compare water color, bitterness and aroma/ flavor at different times.

I see this is an old post.

I made hop tea once and had decent experience adding it to a wild/lambic I did.

Did you ever try it?