10 oz of mystery hops... What to do?

So my roommate was volunteering at the great american beer fest for a brewery that had a big bucket or barrel of hops sitting in front of their booth for people to touch, look at and smell.

Upon leaving the fest she asked them if she could take some hops for me and the brewers gave her a huge bag of hops, they told her the name, but she forgot it apparently they were going to throw them out because people had their hands all over them.

So my questions are, what should I do with these, the brewers were correct, people did have their hands all over them, but the antibacterial properties of hops plus a vigorous boil should take care of that right... It should be safe to use them...

The main problem is I have no idea what type of hops they are, but the bag of hops weighs just over 10oz and who can give up trying to use 10oz of whole leaf hops.... huge dilemma.

I wouldnt worry about the type of hops as long as you dont use them for bittering it makes little difference. Smell them and if they smell like they'd be good for flavor/aroma in the beer your brewing toss them in towards the end of the boil.

Donate them to a children's charity?

Use all of them in one brew of course! Maybe a nice hoppy Imperial IPA or Barleywine? 10oz of free hops? That's like $40 worth at today's prices...nice snag!

Send them to me, I will use them and see how they work.

+1 on making an ipa with them, reguardless of what they are most hops are good in an IPA.

They smell amazingly delicious... but some of them are fairly crushed due to people man handling them... I wonder how hand juices and spilled beer affect the hops...

Donasay said:

They smell amazingly delicious... but some of them are fairly crushed due to people man handling them... I wonder how hand juices and spilled beer affect the hops...

Click to expand...

Hand juice i heard is excellent for mouth feel and also a great source of Vitamin c.

You know, all of us homegrowers are in the same boat as you are. If we're lucky enough to have a rhizome that the seller actually said it is, we still have no idea of the alphas come harvest time.

Yeah, what everyone else said. Or make a one-gallon batch of something neutral like an American pale ale, to give you some idea of what the bittering potential and the aroma are like.

If you can't make 10-15 gallons of a Left-coast IPA out of them ...

(Although, I have used 12 ounces of hops in a 5 gallon batch.)

How do they smell? 5 oz flameout addition and 5 oz dry hop??

I am somewhat afraid to dry hop with them as they had stranger hands all over them... STRANGER DANGER!!!

i would brew up a hop tea or mini-wort to get some idea of the flavors.