Bucky_Brewer
Active Member
I'm sure there are probably guys already doing this, but I searched through the forums and other sources, and I haven't found any mention of this particular method of bottle conditioning/hopping before, so I thought I would toss it out there.
One of my biggest motivations with this is the fact that many of the more delicate flavors and aromas of hops get bound to the yeast cells and end up settling out during yeast flocculation, which is truly unfortunate.
So I've been reading about guys "bottle hopping" with interest, but it seems that most of the guys are just dropping hop pellets into their bottles and accepting the resulting greenish sediment and/or floaties later, which didn't really sound that appealing to me, you know.
And then I started thinking about how most guys boil their priming sugar before mixing it into your beer, anyway, so why not boil some hops at the same time that we boil our priming sugar and add that to the beer right before bottling? Seems to me a person could kill two birds with one stone: bottle condition and flavor/aroma hop at the same time.
Basically a person would: 1) brew a batch of beer, but only use a bittering hop regimen, saving flavor and/or aroma hop regimens for later; 2) allow the beer to ferment and the yeast to flocculate; 3) siphon the beer to a bottling bucket, leaving behind as much of the flocculated yeast as possible; 4) brew up a liter or so of "sweet hop tea" (see below); 5) add the sweet hop tea to the beer and stir; 6) bottle and wait.
Sweet Hop Tea: 1) calculate and weigh-out priming sugar required; 2) bring, say, a liter of water to a boil; 3) add flavor/aroma hops, either loose or in a bag; 4) boil hops for a period of time, either covered with a lid to retain more aroma or without a lid to release some of the aroma and focus more on hop flavor; 5) add priming sugar at the end of the boil and stir; 6) turn off the heat and either strain loose hops or remove hops bag.
Seems to me that there would be a lot of room for experimentation with covered-versus-uncovered boiling, how long to boil the hops, etc., and very little of the flavors and aromas achieved with this method would be lost due to being flocculated-out with the yeast, so there's a bit more control there, as well.
I'm already planning this for my next batch of beer, but it will take me six weeks to see how it turns out, so until then, I thought I would go ahead and see if anybody's heard of this before, if anybody has a link to somebody using this method, and/or what people's thoughts are on it.
One of my biggest motivations with this is the fact that many of the more delicate flavors and aromas of hops get bound to the yeast cells and end up settling out during yeast flocculation, which is truly unfortunate.
So I've been reading about guys "bottle hopping" with interest, but it seems that most of the guys are just dropping hop pellets into their bottles and accepting the resulting greenish sediment and/or floaties later, which didn't really sound that appealing to me, you know.
And then I started thinking about how most guys boil their priming sugar before mixing it into your beer, anyway, so why not boil some hops at the same time that we boil our priming sugar and add that to the beer right before bottling? Seems to me a person could kill two birds with one stone: bottle condition and flavor/aroma hop at the same time.
Basically a person would: 1) brew a batch of beer, but only use a bittering hop regimen, saving flavor and/or aroma hop regimens for later; 2) allow the beer to ferment and the yeast to flocculate; 3) siphon the beer to a bottling bucket, leaving behind as much of the flocculated yeast as possible; 4) brew up a liter or so of "sweet hop tea" (see below); 5) add the sweet hop tea to the beer and stir; 6) bottle and wait.
Sweet Hop Tea: 1) calculate and weigh-out priming sugar required; 2) bring, say, a liter of water to a boil; 3) add flavor/aroma hops, either loose or in a bag; 4) boil hops for a period of time, either covered with a lid to retain more aroma or without a lid to release some of the aroma and focus more on hop flavor; 5) add priming sugar at the end of the boil and stir; 6) turn off the heat and either strain loose hops or remove hops bag.
Seems to me that there would be a lot of room for experimentation with covered-versus-uncovered boiling, how long to boil the hops, etc., and very little of the flavors and aromas achieved with this method would be lost due to being flocculated-out with the yeast, so there's a bit more control there, as well.
I'm already planning this for my next batch of beer, but it will take me six weeks to see how it turns out, so until then, I thought I would go ahead and see if anybody's heard of this before, if anybody has a link to somebody using this method, and/or what people's thoughts are on it.