Hop Tea Vs.Dry hopping

I read a couple of threads here but simply put does it work to make say a pint of hop tea from an ounce of hops and pour into the keg right before kegging?Or should i just put a couple of stainless tea balls with whole hops into the keg and leave them while i enjoy my beer? I made the Cream of three crops recipe from here and there is no aroma hops used at all.all hop additions were at 60min and only a combined ounce of hops then.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/big-hop-flavor-1-3-hops-55721/

There’s an old thread that covers using a French press for hop extracts in place of dry hopping. They called it “Hot French Randall.” Cute, right?

I have been doing this for a while. I add it to secondary. The utilization is way better than dry hop, like three or four times more. Be careful, it’s easy to use too much.

Depends on whether you want bitterness or aromatics.

wow thanks for the link to the thread . im gonna try this in about a week with a beer im kegging. 160 to 170- 2 oz vodka 15 minute steep, pour it in while kegging, crash and chill for a week. about 1/4 oz cascades in a 5 gallon batch. my bittering is fine so flavor and aroma is what im looking for

I started with a half oz of E Kent Golding, then went to a full oz, probably go for 2/3 next time. I haven’t used any vodka. It goes in the secondary.

The thread with the blind tasting complained of “slight vegetal” flavors. That bumps me on several levels. Slight and vegetal are terms that don’t belong together. If it’s vegetal it’s undrinkable. Yet they said it was pretty good, just a little off.

The other thing is where would they get it? The implication is that it came from steeping the hops, but I don’t get that. It’s OK to boil it, but steeping it causes weird flavors?

I wonder if the problem was with their methodology. If the yield is 400% compared to dry hop, their 1.2 oz would be like nearly 5oz of Cascade. Might have been a little catty. Might have just blown them out. Englishmen sampling a big APA? It’s not a bitter. In any case they were comparing apples to oranges.

I cool my beer in the bath tub, which takes a while, twenty minutes or so. Flame out additions seemed rather muted. Dry hops don’t do much. The tea does more with less. I don’t have any off-flavors. The big finish hops are a perfect counterpoint to an estery yeast.

Another technique to consider is to add your "dry hops" to the wort during whirlpooling and skip adding them to the fermentor entirely.

Don’t know about homebrew whirlpooling. It looks kinda scary. I don’t like handling the wort any more than I have to.

A couple of things, though. The heat is going to extract more than dry hopping, and you’re not going to lose as much essential oil to the fermentation. Wouldn’t the CO2 bubbles scrub out some volatile compounds? That’s why I add it to the secondary.

At this point its all experimentation for me. I dont want to ruin a whole batch so i will make the tea with no vodka and add to secondary .well to the primary after most of the fermentation has finished it still looks like the 160 mark is what im looking for on my temp.Time is what i want to save more than hops.If i can get The flavor and aroma in less time than a long dry hop im a happy brewer

I have been steeping at 170ºF as measured in the press. Last time I used RO water on a whim and instead of cooling the near boiling water, just poured it in. I just sampled that batch and it is really amazing. The late hops dominate until the end, when the malt and bittering lingers. I definitely used too much, but the result is intriguing. I think the higher temperature increased the hop utilization and turned my pale into a hop bomb. It’s only two weeks old, I wonder what it will be at six weeks.

I found this from the OP on the old thread:

“The only exception was my first experiments where I added boiling water and let it sit for a long time. That experiment is now a couple of months old and it has aged into the most hoppy beer that I have. But it does have a lingering grassy undertone to the flavor. I still like the beer. When I want to drink a tongue-numbing hop-bomb, that's the beer I go to. In that experiment's defense, it is the same hoppy and grassy flavor that you will find in Russian River's Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. I took all of my beers to the bar at RR and compared them side-by-side and confirmed that this technique can be used to achieve super hoppy beers.”

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/big-hop-flavor-1-3-hops-55721/index5.html#post648017

I've been getting a little grass, but much less this last time, I think it's the RO water, nothing to react with.

On the same page is a post about some people experimenting with hop tea infusion temperature.
http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/hunts-hop-tea/#comments

That’s what I was looking for when I found the boiling thing. Note they’re talking about tea, not beer. The tannin they got in the tea might not be noticeable in five gallons of beer. Also they had fresh cones, not dried hops.

Also I wonder about the effect of the pH and the mineral content of the water. My local water is hard and alkaline. I know I changed two variables (water and temperature), not very scientific, but the result is so striking I think I’m going to stay with it. Next time I will reduce the amount from a full oz to 2/3 and put the odd 1/3 in at flame-out. I hope to broaden the finish and get better balance. Two more variables, I’m such a mess.

ok i used about 1/4 oz pellet hops in a quart of water inside a stainless tea ball to steep at 165/170 for 15 mins cooled it to 70 and poured it into the primary. The fermentation had slowed at a week before i added the hop tea and im going to keg it after another week.