First Attempt at Carbonated Hop Water

[vinnie8]

Hi all,

Just wanted to start a thread to document my first recipe and process.

I am using a 5lb CO2, with a Taprite Regulator, a 2.5 gal. corny keg, and a carbonation lid with a carbonation stone attached.

I chilled all of my water prior to starting and had the keg inside the mini fridge i am using to cool it down as well. CO2 tank was kept outside of the fridge until I was ready to carb.

For the hops, I love Galaxy, so they were my first choice. I am using 8 grams of Galaxy hop pellets for this recipe.

I cold brewed the Galaxy hops in a mason jar with about 12oz of filtered water. I put this mixture into my regular fridge (probably about 33-39F) at 6pm-ish and took it out at about 8am-ish. I let it set on the counter until about noon. I know from cold brewing coffees and teas that different temperatures effect the extraction of different compounds, so while I did not want to invite too much bitterness, I did want to get out some other compounds that might not have liked being in cold water overnight.

I strained the hop mixture using a cotton reuseable coffee filter inside a metal reuseable coffee filter. It came out looking and smelling great.

I added one gallon of my chilled filtered water to the keg. Then I squeezed one whole lemon into the keg. Then I added the strained hop mixture. Then I added the second gallon of chilled water, alongside an extra one quart of filtered water.

I sealed up the keg and started carbing at 25psi and will see where all of this takes me.

 

[vinnie8]

Poured my first pint yesterday. I set the PSI to 20. It came out sparkling with a nice head of foam. Definitely lacking the pugent flavor of hops I was looking for. The lemon flavor is prominent. I hooked the tank back up to the carb cap and set it to 30, i would prefer a bit more bite from the carbonation. All in all, some mildly flavored lemon hop water. Got some great learning out of this and will be ready to make the next batch even better.

I took the rest of my Galaxy hops, because I bought an oz, and put them in a mason jar to make a pseudo hop extract and will let them sit for one day before filtering. I'll add that to the next pints i pour to up the hop flavor, but would prefer to have it all in the keg. Nonetheless, this will work for the time being.

 

[bleme]

A friend of mine quit alcohol but still wants something beer-ish to drink so I made a test batch based on Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher. I scaled everything down to 2 liters and added 1 ounce of Special B to help the yeast wake up and give it a slight maltiness. Technically, it will have a bit of alcohol, but less than I ripe banana so that should be fine. I plan to leave it at room temp for 3 days, chill for 3 days, then force-carb in the 2-liter by shaking.

My club has dubbed this "Elite Homeless Series Fermentation".

 

[marc1]

A friend of mine quit alcohol but still wants something beer-ish to drink so I made a test batch based on Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher. I scaled everything down to 2 liters and added 1 ounce of Special B to help the yeast wake up and give it a slight maltiness. Technically, it will have a bit of alcohol, but less than I ripe banana so that should be fine. I plan to leave it at room temp for 3 days, chill for 3 days, then force-carb in the 2-liter by shaking.

My club has dubbed this "Elite Homeless Series Fermentation".
View attachment 879349

Cool! Can you post the recipe an process for what you did here?

 

[bleme]

Cool! Can you post the recipe an process for what you did here?

I don't have my recipe in front of me but I think I can get close.
I crushed 1oz of Special B and added it to 2-liters of 150F filtered water in my instant Pot, sous vide setting.
After 1 hour, I poured that through a fine mesh filter into a gallon pitcher, then back into the Instant Pot, set to saute.
When the temp got up to about 168F I scooped out 1/2 cup of 'wort', added that to the 2-liter bottle, and plopped 2.83 grams of NZ-### hops in that.
In the Instant Pot, I added (this is where my numbers might be off) .25 grams of calcium chloride and .35 grams of 88% lactic acid.
I let the pot continue to boil for about 10 minutes then turned it off and added 2.83 grams of NZ-### hops to that and covered.
After 10 minutes I pulled out the liner and swished that around in a sink of ice water until the temp was down to 65F.
I added that to the 2-liter with 3 more grams of hops, poured in a whole pack of (expired) US-05 yeast, squeezed out the excess air and capped with a carbonation cap and my spunding valve.
After 72 hours (tomorrow) I will transfer to the refrigerator and 72 hours after that I will transfer to a clean bottle, leaving the yeast and hops behind, cap, connect to 30 psi CO2, and shake the dickens out of it.

If this works out like I hope, then I can scale up to my 5 gallon system where I will have to ability for things like closed transfer, but this should give me a pretty good idea of what the final product will taste like.