Brewing with Whole Hops

[jrbraley]

Hello all,

I recently just harvested all my hops. This will be the first time I have tried to brew with them.

I picked all the hops and dried them out. I have about 4oz of Cascade and 8 oz of Centennial hops. (Have some Sorachi growing as well, but they are way behind.)

I am a bit confused about how much I should use in my 5 Gallon Brew.

From what I have read online dried hops should use the same amount the recipe calls for pellet hops.

It just seems like I should use more.

Does anyone have any experience using whole dried hops for brewing?

 

[m00ps]

SO this is a wet hop beer? Or did you like actually dry them out entirely? There really no way to tell how much alpha acids theyve got since you need to get them tested, and by the time the results are in some wouldve already faded. I would take you favorite IPA recipe, do the bittering charge as normal, and just use all of those wet hops at flameout with a hopstand to capitalize on your hard work

in guessing the 12oz youve got is probably closer to 3oz dried in terms of bittering potential

edit: jsut to be clear dried whole hops is directly 1:1 with pellet. they are just a different form of the same dry hops. Newly harvested wet hops are still msotly water weight so weighing them doesnt really help unless you know their particular moisture content

 

[jrbraley]

I did dry the hops out so I guess that answers my question to stick with a 1:1 ratio. Since I do not know what the alpha is, I am probably going to throw some extra in there, don't think it will hurt anything.

I did make a small tea with 3 of the dried hops it was very bitter!

 

[bbrim]

There are not quite 1:1. All the lupulin glands have been broken open in pellets so there is slightly higher utilization from pellets. You don't know your AA so this doesn't really impact you. When it comes to flavor/aroma it is pretty much 1:1 though there may be some debate. I only use whole hops and beersmith calculates based on the lower utilization rate so I don't even need to think about it.