Distilling hops

[Unferth]

Humans have been dis tilling plants for concentrated oils for literally millennia.

I'm thinking of distilling some hops to make IIPAs easier to make. Because:

A) Dry hopping tastes freaking awesome, losing beer to the hop mess sucks.
B) I can keep oil much easier than lots of hops hanging around. Freezer space!
C) no hop bags.
D) it sounds cool


I have never done it before but I have distilled, um, water and vinegar before.

Would it work the same?

I've also thought about using ethanol to extract the hop oils and just add that to the carboy, but I don't know how much oil can dissolve in the alcohol and dont want to make it too boozy.

 

[Pratzie]

Curious about this as well, since some of the big name breweries (Miller in particular) uses a hop extract (for lack of a better word, im not sure what exactly its called) instead of straight hops for making certain beers such as their High Life.

 

[HopOnHops]

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/hopshot.html

Hop oils are typically done by supercritical co2 extraction. Typically used for bittering, even in commercial examples like pliny or hop stoopid. Not sure how effective they would be for dry hopping since theyre very viscous (wont disperse in cold beer) and also when dry hopping youre trying to infuse the beer with the essential oils. The oils are very volatile so its not likely you can extract them using a typical distillation.

 

[Jaybird]

Do some searches on the net for essential oil extraction and you'll come up with some good finds. PM me if you want a few links to forums that can answer your essential oil distilling questions as this forum frowns upon distilling talk. Yes you can absolutely remove the resins. Its a fairly long process but your normal pot still will not do it very well.

Cheers
Jay

 

[Unferth]

Distilling oils, along with water and vinegar, is perfectly legal in all states and Canada; I don't see why it would matter to talk of such things here... I'm proposing a legal process to make better homebrew.

Would I make a tea first? How is it different from distilling vinegar?

 

[Jaybird]

Ohhh I know.... As do others for sure. I was just giving you the heads up, just in case you didn't know...

Cheers
Jay

 

[Unferth]

Thanks, Jay.

I did some searching and it looks like there is one more leg to essential oil distillation than water or vinegar distillation.

Apparently you have to steam the plants and then distill it and condense it in cooling hoses per usual.

It looks like the by-product of floral water in my scenerio might be a version of hop tea. Wort water anybody?

If my previous experience with vinegar is something to go by, it looks like this might add another full hour to the brew process, though it could be done a different day of course.

 

[Ryush806]

Thanks, Jay.

I did some searching and it looks like there is one more leg to essential oil distillation than water or vinegar distillation.

Apparently you have to steam the plants and then distill it and condense it in cooling hoses per usual.

It looks like the by-product of floral water in my scenerio might be a version of hop tea. Wort water anybody?

If my previous experience with vinegar is something to go by, it looks like this might add another full hour to the brew process, though it could be done a different day of course.

A little bit confused by the picture I your proposed process. Does the distillate go into a decanter and then separate into an oil fraction and a water fraction? You didn't mention it specifically in the post so I just wanted to make sure.

 

[smokinghole]

It will be an interesting flavor difference I think compared to conventional dry hopping. The other interesting thing I'd that if you get good at this, you are perfectly setup to make a killer clone of Ballantine No.1 according to recipes Ive seen. I think you will just have to find, I think, bullion hops.

There are varietal hop oils but I don't exactly know how you would get it to disperse into the beer. I have a feeling its pretty viscous. It'd be interesting to get some and add it to a batch like with a priming solution. For all we know that might be a technique used by some of these breweries that bottle condition. I could see adding a portion of beer to their bottle conditioning system along with a varietal hop essential oil dose. Then that is dosed inline to the filler.

 

[Unferth]

A little bit confused by the picture I your proposed process. Does the distillate go into a decanter and then separate into an oil fraction and a water fraction? You didn't mention it specifically in the post so I just wanted to make sure.

I think so. The oils should separate from the water and float to the surface.

If, however, hop oils have a higher volatility than anything else, it would seem that once condensed in the cool water, one could simply collect the first runnings (heads) and keep them separate from the floral water. Then, use the floral water as wort!

This is a bit different pic From this cool article:

 

[FarmerTed]

You'll definitely have to steam distill the hops to get the oils out. I'm not sure if I've ever done a steam distillation myself (done the regular kind millions of times), but I think your yields will suck. A vacuum distillation or vac transfer would be the way to go, but I doubt you have a food-grade schlenck line to work with (who does?).

 

[ajdelange]

Yes, you can extract the essential oils from hops by steam distillation just as you can from any other plant material. The apparatus is as pictured here:
http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/132252629

The yields are small (because hops don't contain much oil). http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/132252630 shows what I got out of a pound of Saaz Leaf and http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/132389261 the yield from 4 Oz Sterling pellets. Both smelled really, really good.

As the steam distillation is laborious, requires a fair amount of equipment (including the special receiver) and is time consuming it is doubtless much more practical to by industrially extracted oil.

As far as TTB is concerned it is quite legal to do all this but if your distillation flask is bigger than 4L it must be registered with them.

 

[neosapien]

If you get 16 ml from a pound of Saaz, how much of that oil did you put into a brew? and how did the flavor come out as compared to standard hopping?

 

[ajdelange]

That's 0.16 mL - not 16 mL. I didn't put it into a beer but rather, as I recall, took it to my next club meeting and offered it to the ladies who used it as perfume.

 

[smokinghole]

Damn the non refreshing I just posted exactly what is above.

 

[TriggerFingers]

Yes you can do it, but as others said the yields will be small. If you are doing it for aroma only, then knock yourself out.
If you are trying to use CO2 extract for bittering, then that is a different story. Get a hopshot or cans of CO2 hop oil and use as needed.

 

[ajdelange]

Keep in mind that this is hop oil. It is not bitter. The CO2 extracts include the bittering principle.

 

[dinnerstick]

if you are going for a similar extraction to what you would get from a dry hop shouldn't you be able to steep hops in room temp 5% ethanol solution for a few days, mimicking an actual dry hop, and then do a freeze-gelatin clarification, or something similar, as is used for super clear consomme? i just started playing with freeze-agar clarifying, but i must admit my first hop experiment (cascade, and waaay too much of it) was not a huge success.

 

[smokinghole]

That's 0.16 mL - not 16 mL. I didn't put it into a beer but rather, as I recall, took it to my next club meeting and offered it to the ladies who used it as perfume.

Did they smell like BO after 20 min? In my experience hop oils/resins after 15-20 min exposure to oxygen smell like old t-shirts that bubba wore for 5 days mowing grass during July in Atlanta. At my least shirt does when helping weigh out of 100kg bails, and its not from sweating in the 0C cooler.

 

[xico]

Did they smell like BO after 20 min? In my experience hop oils/resins after 15-20 min exposure to oxygen smell like old t-shirts that bubba wore for 5 days mowing grass during July in Atlanta. At my least shirt does when helping weigh out of 100kg bails, and its not from sweating in the 0C cooler.

Thread revival! I'm finishing a 30 single-hop brews in as many days and despite being pooped from the process I'm already working on the next project to occupy myself with. I work for a hops distributor in Yakima so availability is not an issue.

I've been doing some research into this process and figured I'd share what I've gathered from some industry people doing exactly this.

Some hops are more generous than others regarding essential oils. Cascade yields between 0.5 and 2 mL per 100g of flower through water distillation. Some experimental varieties are producing upwards to 6 mL per 100g though so there is potential for some decent returns on your efforts.

What a chemist for an R&D wing of a major hop breeder said about odors from the hops, that these will dissipate with time. White flecks that form are myrcene, and you can store your oils with a little blend of vitamin E and try to fill your container's head space with CO2. O2 is great for breathing but not for hop anything.

Has anyone learned anything new in the last few year? I will be attempting a run with water below a false bottom filled with hops. I'm curious to try several methods, including water/ethanol blends, and soaking hops or putting in dry over a bath.

 

[gometz]

I have been thinking about this since having Hop Hunter. That was made with oils distilled from fresh hops, so I wonder if the sample above of 0.16 mL from 1 lb of Saaz (a low AA and oil content hop) was from dried hops?

While looking around I think I found some small steam distillation systems for about $100. If it looks like I am going to get some good hops from my plants this year, I may look into doing this at home. Also thought about converting my old pressure cooker and using a steamer basket to hold the hops. The biggest problem I have had with any idea is how to efficiently separate the water and oil at the end.

Please let me know what you find in your experiment. If you can get your hands on some fresh hops I'd love to know what the difference is compared to dried ones (I know it's past season, but I'm sure some homebrew stores still have a few frozen packages).

 

[Silverfish]

I have done this before!!

Here is an album from when I did it.

https://imgur.com/a/DzTsf

I used my pressure cooker since the outlet was easy to connect a hose to (high temperature silicone). I ran the tube into ice water until all the ice had melted (start with as much ice as you can because the steam is hot!). The oils float to the top of the water and they were potent! They tasted similar to how the hops smelled with some citrus in there too (i used homegrown cascade).

After the first glass of ice water melted I tried again, but the second time hardly yielded any oil, you get most of it off pretty quickly.

 

[gometz]

I have done this before!!

Here is an album from when I did it.

https://imgur.com/a/DzTsf

I used my pressure cooker since the outlet was easy to connect a hose to (high temperature silicone). I ran the tube into ice water until all the ice had melted (start with as much ice as you can because the steam is hot!). The oils float to the top of the water and they were potent! They tasted similar to how the hops smelled with some citrus in there too (i used homegrown cascade).

After the first glass of ice water melted I tried again, but the second time hardly yielded any oil, you get most of it off pretty quickly.

That's awesome. Doesn't look like you got a lot of oil from it though. How did you use it?

 

[Silverfish]

That's awesome. Doesn't look like you got a lot of oil from it though. How did you use it?

Actually, the yield wasnt bad considering I used only 1 oz of hops. There was a layer on top of the water that was ~1/8" thick. Sorry about the photo, it doesnt really capture it.

I actually havent used any of the oil yet (besides tasting it). This was just a proof of concept after work experiment that I did.

 

[xico]

Very cool, thanks for sharing! The images I saw from the chemist looked like they were collecting into a thin 30 mL cylinder This allowed pulling oils off the top very easy.

As I learn more I will share here. It's great to see people doing this at home.

A few questions: What had to be done to the pressure cooker? Is it simply a matter of pushing a hose on the relief valve? What would you do to improve the process? What was the water to flower ratio? How long did it go for?

 

[Silverfish]

Very cool, thanks for sharing! The images I saw from the chemist looked like they were collecting into a thin 30 mL cylinder This allowed pulling oils off the top very easy.

As I learn more I will share here. It's great to see people doing this at home.

A few questions: What had to be done to the pressure cooker? Is it simply a matter of pushing a hose on the relief valve? What would you do to improve the process? What was the water to flower ratio? How long did it go for?

I imagine you could get the oils off easily with a spoon... it wouldnt matter if you got a little water with it. No modifications were made to the pressure cooker, I just attached a hose to where the weight usually sits. The water to hop ratio doesnt matter, you just need enough water to sustain a boil for about 10 mins. It only took ~5-10 mins to get all the oils out. Im not sure what id do differently... probably experiment with other types of hops.

 

[Spyk'd]

Hop Shot??

 

[gometz]

Hop Shot??

I think Hop Shot is a similar idea, but loses a lot of the aromatic qualities of the hops. My idea here at least was to mimic what Sierra Nevada did for Hop Hunter and steam distill fresh hops.

 

[ajdelange]

I have been thinking about this since having Hop Hunter. That was made with oils distilled from fresh hops, so I wonder if the sample above of 0.16 mL from 1 lb of Saaz (a low AA and oil content hop) was from dried hops?

Yes, dried hops.

 

[Bitterweed]

I am going to do a 50 gallon batch of Nuggets on sunday... fingers are crossed! I will post pics......

 

[Bitterweed]

I filled the back of my pickup this morning with hops, drove 60 miles to the lavender farm where my hops would become "liquid gold" we ran the still 2 times longer than what he does with his lavender, the result... 10 gallons hydrosol and 1 oz of pure oil... Granted if everything was perfect, and I did small batches of hops at their peak I could have had higher yields.. BUT... OMG it smells like heaven!

 

[corkybstewart]

I'm looking at ways to distill hop oil this summer-my Cascades usually start producing cones in May and continue until October. Do you use fresh hops, or do they need to be dry first?