F Dry Hopping!!!!!

[CEMaine]

Well, to play Devil's Advocate...

Isn't it kind of cool, if you're going to go to all the trouble of growing hops, to at least be able to taste or smell them in the finished product? If you use them for bittering... well, you could have used anything. You might not be able to tell the difference between a store-bought Cascade and one you grew in the backyard, but if you use it for flavor/aroma, at least you're TASTING the fruits of your labors, right?

+2 to the Bird

I ALWAYS do a Fresh Hop Ale. It may not be the most efficient use but, if your hops grow like mine, there are still plenty.
The feeling of drinking your own beer with your own hops cannot be beat.

 

[cheezydemon]

I only know that I made an APA with last years homegrown Nugget and homegrown Cascade that is amongst the best APAs I've ever tasted, commercial or homebrewed.
Also, I don't know why you'd brew with wet hops when it only takes a couple days at the most to dry them. Is there a supposed desirable flavor from wet hopping besides "grassy"?

I don't know but I am sure as hell going to find out.

I love to cook, and the "fresh is better" is almost universal as far as flavor is concerned. So I will give it a whirl and let you know!

It is not the laziness of not wanting to dry them, it is the need to know hops forward backward, fresh or dried.

 

[Brewsmith]

Part of the purpose of frying hops is to store them. They will go moldy fast when wet. If you're going to use them right away, there's no point in drying them.

 

[Jester369]

Don't let the extra weight of the wet hops scare you. Yes you need about 5x the amount of hops by weight, but that's because the extra weight is just water. You're not using more hops, just more weight.

Ya know, that was my first thought. If I've got 25 hop cones, I've got a certain amount of resins and whatnot. Drying them removes the water weight, so now I have 25 really light hop cones, that should theoretically have the same amount of resins and whatnot, no? But hey - I've been wrong before!

 

[cheezydemon]

No, you are right.......5 hop cones wet = the same 5 cones when dried. No more no less.

I would actually be surprised if wet cones didn't contain more oils and aa than dried, even if by just a little bit.