Found Wild Hops, Now What? [pics]

[generikal]

Recently I found a bunch of wild hops in my neighborhood. They are growing next to a river and main road. I'm sure it would be fine for me to gather them. What would be the best way to use these? How could I tell what these hops would be best used for? Any advice is helpful, Thanks! :rockin:

 

[Mongrel]

Talk to the neighbors and see if anyone knows the variety.

 

[strambo]

Pick a malt, brew a SMASH...then if they taste kinda earthy, use them in porters, stouts, wheats etc. If they taste kinda spicy-citrusy use them in APA & IPAs! That's awesome, I'd love to find some mystery hops. Worse-case if you get a good feel from the SMASH of how they bitter to guess an AA level, just use them for bittering additions.

 

[JLem]

I'd use them as late hops only since there's no knowing what their AA level is - though most likely only in the 1-5% range if they are truly wild (or feral perhaps?). If you're not going to dry them, you'll want to pick them just before using them and will need 4-5x as much as you would with dried hops. Also, you'll want to make sure they're ready to harvest before doing so. I'm no expert here, so you might want to read up on that if you need further info about that. I think there's a hop growing forum somewhere here.

I'm jealous - I've been thinking it would be pretty cool to find some "wild" hops to brew with.

Btw, how do they smell?

 

[phoenixs4r]

Grab a rhizome and plant it! Or send one to me

 

[MisterTipsy]

First, you should have an all day drum circle session around the hops. Then harvest every single one of them at sundown!

 

[res291que]

Grab a rhizome and plant it! Or send one to me

I agree would be fun to grab a couple rhizomes to send out to us. Cheers congrats on the lucky find. Good luck on the fresh hop ale, let us know how it turns out.

 

[mikeysab]

Darn, when I read the title, I thought it was gonna be a story of hops drinking whiskey, smoking funny cigarettes and having unprotected sex.

 

[mikeysab]

Was there a van close by? They might belong to this guy:

 

[jonmohno]

Winner,winner. I would do a wet hop batch,and dry some finding out how to properly do so.If you like them,I would dig up rizomes.Do they have aroma,or is it something you have to dry to get that? Usually with wild hops it seems you should assume its low AAU's. But you could find out if you had them tested if you think its worth it.Personally I would just brew a small batch to find out how potent and bitter they are.

 

[phatspade]

http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat/hops.cfm

Looks like Chinook or golding to me.

 

[CrystallineEntity]

Sell them to Fifty Fifty.

 

[mredge73]

Make a 'hop tea'; take a sample at 5,15,20,60 minute boil and taste to get a real since of what it is.
Good luck, great find!

fyi
Willamette hops are often used as decor.

 

[JayB240]

Winner,winner. I would do a wet hop batch,and dry some finding out how to properly do so.If you like them,I would dig up rizomes.Do they have aroma,or is it something you have to dry to get that? Usually with wild hops it seems you should assume its low AAU's. But you could find out if you had them tested if you think its worth it.Personally I would just brew a small batch to find out how potent and bitter they are.

http://www.northesthops.com/Harvest_and_Drying_hops_s/14.htm Great set of clues

I check my hops .... Nope not ready yet

Jay

 

[generikal]

Decided to pull the trigger on these as they look pretty close to pick.
I called the owner of the property and she said I could have as many as I want.
WOO HOO!

Anyways I'm going to keep it simple and use an extract recipe to test my results. What do you think of this:

6.3 Pounds of Gold Malt Sryup
Briess Caramel 40L - 1 lb. crushed

then something like this for my hop Schedule but using my mystery hops:
1 oz fresh Nugget - 60 minutes boil
1/2 oz fresh Nugget - 45 minutes boil
1 oz fresh Cascade - 30 minutes boil
1/2 oz fresh Cascade - 15 minutes boil
1 oz fresh Cascade - 10 minutes boil
1/2 oz fresh Nugget - 5 minutes boil
3 oz fresh Cascade - 0 minutes boil - flameout
3 oz fresh Nugget - 0 minutes boil - flameout
1 oz fresh Cascade - 5 minutes boil
3 1/2 oz fresh Cascade - Wet Hop in Secondary Fermenter
2 1/2 oz fresh Nugget - Wet Hop in Secondary Fermenter

Then ferment with White Labs WLP090 San Diego Super Strain

I'm very new to crafting my own recipes as this is actually my first one so I'd prefer to stick with extract as it's easy for me.

Any advice is very helpful! Thank you!

 

[JordanThomas]

IIRC, 45 and 30 minute additions won't do much for you. I'd up the late additions.

Just for reference, you can see Stone uses no additions anywhere between FWH and 15 minutes for any of their IPA's.

http://www.stonebrew.com/news/081201/

 

[generikal]

what about the 60 then? Should I just add everything after the 30 min mark?

 

[JordanThomas]

what about the 60 then? Should I just add everything after the 30 min mark?

The 60 minute addition is your FWH/Bittering hop. That will give you the majority of your IBU. That, you want. That is, if you want any bitterness to your beer. Some beers don't call for much in the way of bitterness, so that addition is often skipped in certain styles.

That being said... I'd go with a 60 minute hop and everything else at 15 or fewer minutes. I just did a wet hopped IPA on Tuesday and I did 1oz of pellets at 60 (because my wet hops were cascades... not exactly a bittering hop) and 4oz/4oz/3oz/2oz at 15/7/5/1 minute intervals. Maybe try that if you can yield a pound or so (not that hard with wet hops... it's about 2 gallon bags full).

My 2 cents!

 

[generikal]

Great thank you so much for the advice!!!
What was your grain bill?
What did you use for hop pellets?

 

[passedpawn]

Jealous here. Damned, profoundly jealous. I need to get some going down here.

 

[JordanThomas]

Happy to give you the recipe. Take it with a grain of salt, though... I wanted a more malty/sweet IPA and blew my efficiencies out of the water. And I haven't tasted it yet, so it could be terrible. It could also be AMAZING.

11.25 lbs Maris Otter
3.00 lbs Munich
1.75 Crystal/Caramel 15L

1 oz Bravo (pellet, 60 minute) - 35 IBU
4 oz Cascade (wet hop, 15 minute) - 18 IBU
4 oz Cascade (wet hop, 7 minute) - 13 IBU
3 oz Cascade (wet hop, 4 minute) - 9 IBU
2 oz Cascade (wet hop, 1 minute) - 6 IBU

Going to dry hop with more that I dried. 7 days prior to bottling.

Those IBU's are based on 6% AA Cascades. Could be way higher or lower depending.

Mashed at 158 for 1 hour. 6 gallons of 170F strike water. Single sparge with 3.75 gallons sparge water. Preboil volume of 7.4 gallons. Ended with about 6 gallons. Hit 1.080 with 88% efficiency (WAY HIGH).

 

[strambo]

I also suggest just using a 60 minute addition and the rest at 20 min or under. Between the simple grain bill and plenty of aroma/flavor and dryhop additions you should really be able to see what these are like. If you aren't drying them first, you'll need to use 3x as much "wet" hops by weight as dry.

 

[Twistedkarma]

so, all these threads on wild hops, and both end with no, hey, they were nasty or, great.

zombie thread.

 

[RM-MN]

I just harvested a bunch of hops from my property. I suspect they were planted by a guy who lived near there about 100 years ago. I don't know the variety, I've never met the guy who lived there and I suspect he may have died before I was born over 60 year ago so finding out the variety is near impossible but I'm betting on Saaz or Halertau. I'll give them a try when I brew my next batch. I only picked about half of them because they had climbed trees and half were too high to reach. If they turn out good I may try to train the bines to follow low branches instead of climbing the trunks.

 

[ong]

My understanding is that most old hops plantings and "wild hops" in the US are Cluster... Might be worth comparing aroma to some commercial Cluster.

 

[DaNewf]

I found some wild hops growing locally last year. After some surfing I decided they were probably cluster but had no way of knowing for sure. I picked what I could, brought it home and dried it. My final dry weight was about 5oz.

The recommendations I found for wild hops was to use them for flavour/aroma additions since there was no way to determine AA%. Instead (being contrary) I made up a version of BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde replacing all the cascade and centennial hops with my mystery hop. Assuming the hop was cluster I adjusted the bittering addition for an AA% that was in the middle of cluster's range (6% IIRC) but used the same weights listed in the recipe for the flavour and aroma additions.

The result was a good beer that was decently similar to the original (I named it Wild Cluster Blonde). I then turned around and used in in a stout that only had a single bittering addition again adjusting for an AA% of 6 (I think). The bitterness of the stout was about right.

These two experiments renforced my belief (though I may be wrong) that hop X was actually cluster since cluster is supposed to be an decent all purpose hop. I will continue to use it under this assumption.

Continue to use it?

I checked this past weekend and the bines appear to be doing even better than last year. The cones are now fully formed and starting to show yellow in the center. I'm looking forward to a good harvest.

 

[DaNewf]

No neighbors to ask.

These are growing on the side of the road by a community walking trail. There are a bunch of damson trees growing in the area so I'm sure it used to be private property at one point. Damson trees used to be really popular in Newfoundland and you still find them everywhere eventhough not many people plant or maintain them anymore.

 

[Twistedkarma]

Hmmm. So. Is it fools gold?

Humulus japonicus

 

[ScudrunnerBrewing]

Hi, I'm really wanting to get some fresh wild hops... I'm in central Newfoundland. Can anyone point me in the direction to find some?

 

[JohnSand]

You should probably start a new thread. I don't know if hops grow there, or did. You might consider growing your own. Good luck with your search