Owly055
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- Joined
- Feb 28, 2014
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I'm trending toward larger amounts of hops later in the boil these days.........with very good results. More flavor and aroma are retained......... Hops are the "sunshine" in beer. They are the life and the joy of beer..........for me. Alcohol doesn't hurt either ;-)
I've been toying with ways to capture aromatics more effectively.......... If you can smell the hops during brewing or fermenting, you are losing flavor and aroma.... it's in the air not the beer at that point.......... I want it in the beer.
My experiment last evening of putting the hops in a jar, filling it with boiling wort to the brim, capping immediately, and dropping it back into the boil to be added back when cool appears to have been a success, though until I brew a "control" using the same recipe and conventional methods I won't really know for sure.
Distillation of essential oils is simple... something many people do at home using inexpensive equipment...... If you can smell it........ you can distill it. Imagine pulling these aromatics out of hops and adding a drop to each bottle when you bottle your beer.......
Anybody try this? I'm seeing a number of possible approaches from using a perfume type distillation setup to using steam...... perhaps running through a basket , and condenser as with gin. Even something as simple as a pot with water and hops (perhaps vodka and hops?) sitting on a low flame with a round bottom bowl full of ice on top and a center mounted catch cup to capture the condensation.
The "mad scientist" projects are the most fun......... anybody working in this direction?
H.W.
I've been toying with ways to capture aromatics more effectively.......... If you can smell the hops during brewing or fermenting, you are losing flavor and aroma.... it's in the air not the beer at that point.......... I want it in the beer.
My experiment last evening of putting the hops in a jar, filling it with boiling wort to the brim, capping immediately, and dropping it back into the boil to be added back when cool appears to have been a success, though until I brew a "control" using the same recipe and conventional methods I won't really know for sure.
Distillation of essential oils is simple... something many people do at home using inexpensive equipment...... If you can smell it........ you can distill it. Imagine pulling these aromatics out of hops and adding a drop to each bottle when you bottle your beer.......
Anybody try this? I'm seeing a number of possible approaches from using a perfume type distillation setup to using steam...... perhaps running through a basket , and condenser as with gin. Even something as simple as a pot with water and hops (perhaps vodka and hops?) sitting on a low flame with a round bottom bowl full of ice on top and a center mounted catch cup to capture the condensation.
The "mad scientist" projects are the most fun......... anybody working in this direction?
H.W.
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