AA of homegrown hops?

[Chris_Primavera]

So

My second year Centennials got crushed by a week of 90° weather and I was only able to harvest about 2 oz. of dried cones.

I used 1 oz of CTZ for bittering, 1 oz. of home grown at 15 minutes and 1 oz at flame out.

I plugged in 8% AA for a guesstimate - sound reasonable?

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I would also like to know how to figure this out. Ideally if there was some sort of guestimate you coud make based on sensory ques like how oily they feel or if you eat a leaf or two. If not is there a home test?

 

[Sadu]

It probably matters a lot less if you use pellet hops for bittering and the home-grown ones for late additions. That's what I'm planning on doing with my new Cascade plant anyway.

 

[thaymond]

When I bitter with my homegrown hops, I will assume the lowest AA in the range. So as an example, Cascade can be 4.5% to 7%. So, I'll assume 4.5% and adjust my amounts based on leaf hops and the 4.5 AA. That said, I'm usually bittering with Zeus, which can range from 14% to 20% AA. That's a far greater margin of error than the 4.5% to 7%. I haven't had any issues in my brews and I try to keep them fairly balanced between hops and malt. This works for me

If your thinking about a crazy hop bomb, pellets are definitely better to use than leaf. I used 16 oz in a 5 gallon DIPA batch, and I had a 6 inch deep layer of hops I had to stir through. It was awesome, but I won't likely do it again. I ended up losing almost a gallon of sweet wort to the hops, and thats after straining and pressing the liquid out of them. It did turn out pretty good, if I do say so. There was just enough unbalanced bitterness for a 9.5% beer.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

I know this is an old thread, but I have the same question. I have Nugget and Columbus hops on the bines. Why not take an average as an estimate? In the Cascade example 4.5 o 7%. Instead of assuming, (geez... how I detest that word), use AA = (4.5 + 7) / 2 = 5.72 AA%