good places to buy hops in lbs?

Besides hopsdirect - which is awesome. I just need a good place to find simcoe hops in lbs of pellets. Is there any other sites like hopsdirect that you guys know of? Thanks

 

Fresh Hops maybe

 

nikobrew has em... but they're $29 per lb. Yikes.

 

Try North Country Malt. It looks like they're out of Simcoe pellets but have whole leaf. Personally, I'm waiting for the 2009 crop to be pelletalized before order more hops. Hope it's within the next month or so...

 

North Country Malt had them a few months ago for $23/lb.

 

fresh hops has them for $28... yikes! At that price, I'd start subbing for other things.
(and to think that used to be cheap, lol.)

 

Just wondering, is it better to but whole leaf of pellets (in bulk)? I don't have a vacuum sealer..

 

I found that whole leaf hops take up 3-4x as much freezer space compared to pellets. I took the cheap way to vacuum seal my hops: I store them in wide-mouth pint mason jars. For $10, I bought a mason jar attachment for a FoodSaver device. Then I use a Reynolds Vacuum Pump instead of a FoodSaver to suck the air out. Cheap and easy!

 

Do you know if this thing pulls a good vacuum that comparable to a table top vacuum sealer?

 

In all fairness, hop degradation is nearly the same whether the hops are vacuum sealed, or just air tight. The largest factor is temp. and air tight packaging. After that, the AA savings from vacuum sealing is relatively small.

 

I don't have any way to measure it of course. Enough of the air has been removed to necessitate me prying off the lid of the jar so I know at least it's done some vacuuming. The only other anecdotal evidence is that the Reynolds pump work very well with the Reynolds bags in really getting the air out of the bags and is comparable to a FoodSaver in that respect.

 

What do you consider relatively small?

Temperature really is the largest factor regardless of packaging if you are considering the differences are small.

For example...

Cascade hops - 6% AA, 12 months old, 68F
No seal adjusted AA% - 1.5%
Airtight adjusted AA% - 2.12%
Vacuum adjusted AA% - 3.00%

Cascade hops - 6% AA, 12 months old, 32F
No seal adjusted AA% - 3.46%
Airtight adjusted AA% - 3.97%
Vacuum adjusted AA% - 4.56%

Cascade hops -6% AA, 12 months old, 0F
No seal adjusted AA% - 4.67%
Airtight adjusted AA% - 4.97%
Vacuum adjusted AA% - 5.29%

If you consider the difference between airtight and vacuum relatively small, then you should also consider the difference between airtight and no seal small as well. In that case, why bother with sealing at all?

However, I am an advocate of freezing and vacuuming my hops. I think that the difference, though small should be noted.

I also think that there is more to be concerned with than just alpha acids. The aromatic oils come to mind, and I think they benefit from vacuum packaging. I relate it to vacuumed packed spices.

I searched journals and but I couldn't find any studies on anaerobic environment with relation to essential oils in to back my thoughts.

Any thoughts?

 

Yes, like I said, the AA degradation is relatively small across the vacuum, air tight etc. realm, but much greater across the temp. realm. Thanks for posting the specifics.

 

Take an empty jar and use your device to seal it. Then submerge the jar, lid down and straight up and down, not angled. Pry the lid off for a second then replace the lid before taking the jar out of the water.

You'll know how much air your leaving in the jar by how much water was allowed to rush in.

I use a brake bleeder and it pulls around 85% of the air out of the jar. I'm curious to see what kind of vacuum those devices pull

 

Sweet idea

 

My FoodSaver is 78% vaccuum. Nice trick!

 

It pulls a great vacuum. I was surprised because it was cheap, came with batteries, etc.

The bags are not so reliable. After a month in the freezer, don't be surprised if half of them are no longer evacuated. Still, I use Reynolds thing and would highly recommend it as a cheap solution for storage.

 

Has anyone tried this with the Reynolds vacuum pump? I'm curious and it seems to be a rather objective way to determine it's power.

 

I'll give it a go when I get home. Sounds like a very interesting way of measuring air content.

 

Reynolds vac pump works well, bags suck & not in a good way. As far as I know the product has been discontinued - most likely because the bags un-suck too much. You can use the Reynolds with a wide mouth food saver jar attachment and it does a pretty good job of removing air from the jar.

 

Where were you last year when hops were $4 and up an ounce? There giving them away now.

 

that's what I meant.... that used to be cheap... now $28 is just short of 3x what most cost.

 

See, I typically buy hops per recipe, but I seem to use cascades a lot, so I see that HopsDirect.com has them for $11/pound for leaf hops. Do you guys think there is an advantage to buying pellets over whole hops for long term storage? I am assuming that I'd be using the whole pound in about 4-6 months considering not every beer I brew will be using them.

Also, has anyone ordered from hops direct? If so, what's up with there shipping? How much has it been for you guys?

 

Pellets will keep longer, but if you are going to use them all in 4-6 months then I would choose what you like best.

I ordered 5 lbs from them not to long ago. Shipping was around 10 bucks.

 

I just received 3 pounds from them. UPS ground was about $6.50.

 

Where did you get these numbers? Is there a formula or something somewhere? I'm not questioning them, I would just like to know how I can calculate for some hops I have had kicking around.

 

Promash and Beersmith both have the hop degradation charts.

 

I ordered 4lbs on friday afternoon. Got UPS ship confirmation monday afternoon. It'll be here tomorrow, according to UPS. I got charged $6.94 for shipping.

 

4 Lb's huh? I brew about a batch every 3 weeks and I don't think I could use that many before they get old. How much beer do you brew?

Thanks,
J

 

Here's what I got:

Willamette Pellet Hops 1 lb. $ 6.75
Cascade Pellet Hops 1 lb. $ 8.75
Galena Pellet Hops 1 lb. $ 9.75
Centennial Pellet Hops 1 lb. $ 10.75

I like IPA's, so the centennials and cascades will go pretty quickly. I'll use the galena in whatever for bittering, and I really couldn't pass up $6.75 for a whole friggin pound of willamettes.

I'll probably break each pound up into 2oz bags, vacuum sealed, and stored in the back of the freezer.

I doubt that I'll use all of the hops within a year, but even if I don't- they were so cheap it will still be worth it. My LHBS charges like $3/oz for hops, so I could literally make one batch of two-hearted clone (4oz centennial) and throw the rest of the pound away and STILL save money.

 

The Reynolds vacuum sealer looks like it is taking between 75-80% of the air from the mason jars. Thanks for the input on how to test it!

 

Seems like the brake bleader works the best followed closely by the foodsaver and Reynolds which seem to work about the same. Thanks guys for the info. I would have never thought the Reynolds vacuum would pull as well as it does but I know crap. If I can find one I'll be getting it as I don't have much use for a foodsaver besides hop storage. Although Harbor Freight does sell a cheap brake bleader. Hmmmmmm.......

If anyone is interested.
http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Alvin-Vacuum-Sealer/

 

Only downside to the brake bleeder is that it's manual... well, upside i guess if you don't want to go through batteries. But you better have big forearms if you're doing a lot of vacuuming!

 

I'm impressed with the Reynolds sealer's performance. If anyone else uses a different method then post the numbers up so we can get an idea of whats out there.

I use the break bleeder, and it takes about 20 pumps per jar. It's not bad at all, except the day I sealed 30 lbs of specialty grains in quart mason jars

 

About HD shipping costs. Really dudes, call them. Thier shipping isnt bad, considering in many cases they are shipping nearly across the entire country. People have looked up thier shipping cost, and they only charge ACTUAL shipping.

This being said, shipping is aggregate. You will get charged $5 to ship one pound. You will be charged $45 to ship 50 pounds.

So, $5 per pound to ship to $.90 per pound to ship... depends on qty.

Best solution, buy a TON of hops, keep them, sell them on CL or Ebay... or do a group buy and split them with friends or a HB club.

I have 9 pounds in stock and over 20 varieties, all thanks to HD and a group buy this summer that was 50 pounds even! It was slightly under $1000 worth of hops, shipped.