My beef with wet hops

The idea of brewing with wet hops seemed really cool to me, so I tried two recipes recently:

One was the Two Hearted clone with Centennial wet hops (bittering addition was dried before brewing) and one was EdWort's Haus Pale Ale with home grown Cascade hops.

Both of them are cloudy and bitter (compared to other batches I've made).

The rule of thumb that seems to be popular is that the ratio of wet hops to dry hops is 5:1. But this is obviously dependent on how much moisture is in the hops. I feel like the Cascade's I grew had much less moisture when I harvested (they had already started drying out).

I don't know, maybe it's just in my technique, or maybe wet hops really shouldn't be used for every single hop addition in a recipe. But if you aren't spending the time to dry a batch of wet hops to figure out how much moisture they have, I think it's risky to use them exclusively in a recipe.

Oh, and for my question: has anyone else noticed cloudier batches when using wet hops?

Are these hops you grew yourself? Did you know the stats on them?

I used my cascades dried out in a box and just estimated at 6% AA and used all 11 oz for 10 gallons of IPA within 15 minutes so that even if my AA was way off, it would not severely impact the ending IBU's as much as putting them in at 60 min. Basically, I am following Jamil's suggestions to do all late hop additions, even for the bittering addition...just add more hops to get to the desires IBU.

Aren't you supposed to use wet hops on or as close as possible to the day of harvesting?

mcaple1 said:

Basically, I am following Jamil's suggestions to do all late hop additions, even for the bittering addition...just add more hops to get to the desires IBU.

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I think this is great advice - I'm not sure the reasoning for Jamil's recommendation, but I have now done two batches using wet hops for all additions, and I'm not really happy with the results (even using "dry" hops for the 60 min additions).

Oh, and yes, the Cascade were home grown, the Centennial were from Hops Union (LHBS), and neither batch is that good.

mcaple1 said:

I used my cascades dried out in a box and just estimated at 6% AA and used all 11 oz for 10 gallons of IPA within 15 minutes so that even if my AA was way off, it would not severely impact the ending IBU's as much as putting them in at 60 min. Basically, I am following Jamil's suggestions to do all late hop additions, even for the bittering addition...just add more hops to get to the desires IBU.

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If the hops were "dried out in a box", they are dried hops, not wet hops, and you'd use them as regular whole hops. If they are wet- that is, just off of the vine, you need to use about 5x more.

Yooper said:

If the hops were "dried out in a box", they are dried hops, not wet hops, and you'd use them as regular whole hops. If they are wet- that is, just off of the vine, you need to use about 5x more.

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Yooper - Right...I understand that. My point was simply that homegrown hops...whether wet or dried are often cautioned to not be used as a bittering hop, unless you err onm the side of caution and do a late huge charge of homegrown hops so that if your AA estimation is off, then it wont dramatically affect the final AA...of course...unless you are talking a late charge of 5 lbs of hops....then you might have some huge swings between anticipated and actual AA.

OP - The reason Jamil suggests only doing late addition hops for bittering even is that the bittering is supposed to be less "intense". You still get the correct AA you want for your recipe by just upping the amount of oz to meet the correct AA. This makes the bitterness more "drinkable" and is something Jamil does with all his commercial examples at Heretic Brewing Company.

Oh yeah, and Yooper....it's called a BINE!! Get with the program girl!

My own experience with wet centennial hops from my garden is more like 2to1 or3to1. For example, when I harvested the first ripe cones this season I had 11.26 ounces of wet hops and after drying them in a paper bag with a hair dryer I had exactly 4 ounces. Could be that the ratios that are tossed around are off, could be different for different varieties, could be that I don't dry mine completely. My advice is to weigh before and after oasting and when you have papery crumbly hops, you'll know the ratio you should use in your brewery.

Kentunkel said:

My own experience with wet centennial hops from my garden is more like 2to1 or3to1. For example, when I harvested the first ripe cones this season I had 11.26 ounces of wet hops and after drying them in a paper bag with a hair dryer I had exactly 4 ounces. Could be that the ratios that are tossed around are off, could be different for different varieties, could be that I don't dry mine completely. My advice is to weigh before and after oasting and when you have papery crumbly hops, you'll know the ratio you should use in your brewery.

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That's a good idea. Last year I didn't weigh mine, I just dried them. Two 5 gallon buckets ended up being about 26 ounces of dried hops. I wish I would have thought to weigh them first!