Hop Tea

[UdonPete]

Can you substitute Hop Tea instead of a Dry Hop during fermentation ?

 

[Protos]

I'm subscribing to the thread.
Interested in any answers as well.

 

[cmac62]

For dry hopping generally you don't want to boil it at all. I've seen stuff on here about using freezing cold high proof Alcohol to tincture the hops and then you could let the alcohol dry off or use it as is and add the little bit of ABV. I must admit I haven't tried this, but I have a bottle of everclear in the freezer to see if it works. Maybe, I'll get it out tonight and get it ready for the beer I have in the fermenter, but probably not, I have an hour commute home and by the time I get there it is usually a sprint to the keggerater and a pint. LOL.

 

[cmac62]

I found the thread talking about using high proof ETOH as the solvent. The guy who explains the process goes off the bean somewhere in the last part of the thread and gets kicked off HTB, but I think his process has merit. Experiment - Ethanol humulone extraction I think the crazy person's extract process is at #30 or so.

 

[monkeymath]

I once tried dry-hopping vodka under various conditions (room temp, fridge, freezer) for various periods of time (3, 7 or 14 days, iirc). All came out very bitter and not hugely aromatic. My takeaway: the colder and shorter, the better.
I haven't attempted using this technique to make a hop tincture for beer yet, and I don't think I'm going to. The flavour might change, though, since the contributed alpha acids should mostly not be solvable in beer.

 

[cmac62]

Yeah, 3-5 seconds in sub-freezing temps (everything) with whole cone hops is what the guy in the above thread was recommending. Then the ETOH only removes the glands of the flowers and you get yellow to amber liquid with no green from the veg matter. This is what is reported. I have not yet tried this, but plan on getting some whole cone hops to try it with.

 

[cmac62]

@UdonPete the short answer is yes and there are threads talking about this extensively.

 

[UdonPete]

@UdonPete the short answer is yes and there are threads talking about this extensively.

Interesting, I will search again as I could not find when I tried before

 

[pinemarten]

I think the big take away is not making the tea with water. Alcohol, even in lowish beer concentrations, is a great solvent and is needed to get your money’s worth with hop extraction.

The Genus Brewing Podcast covers this right near the end of this episode:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/genus-brewing-beer-podcast/id1523383593?i=1000511356826

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I am pretty sure David Heath has a few videos on this topic (but it is not something I have tried, at least not making a tea that I added to a beer). Here is one video:

 

[sibelman]

Interesting, I will search again as I could not find when I tried before

Look for "french press". It can work but may not be durable due to oxygen.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

To add on to this. Years ago I did an experiment playing around with making hop teas to evaluate hop character. I would have to look back at my notes, but I found that I could make an okay tasting beverage by mixing my hop tea at a 20/80 ratio with a malt liquor. The theory was that the 7% malt liquor has minimal hop flavors and the resulting mix still tasted like beer. While that did work, I found that just making a 3/4 gallon batch of extract based beer actually produced an enjoyable beer.

My concerns with making a hop tea and adding it to a finished beer would be 1) the amount needed and the resulting diluting and 2) oxygen introduced. If anything close to the 20% that I used is needed, that is a lot of water (1 gallon!) and a lot of dilution. I am just not sure that 16 oz of a hop tea will have much impact on 640 oz of beer.

 

[UdonPete]

Look for "french press". It can work but may not be durable due to oxygen.

Thank you - would not have guessed that

 

[cmac62]

Interesting, I will search again as I could not find when I tried before

Sorry, I did not mean to sound like one of those guys. LOL