I'm not too sure what to think about these hops balls. I got two of them because of their stainless steel design, which makes them durable and easy to clean. Their description says they can hold up to 1 oz of hops, but I can barely pack more than a half ounce of leaf hops in one, and with the pellet hops, they tend to expand once they are boiled. Even .25 oz of the pellet hops in that ball expands to almost fill it.
The thing that concerns me about those balls is, when I go to clean them, I look at the remains of the hops in the ball and wonder if they were extracted enough.
Maybe I just haven't used enough hops to really make a difference in the taste of the beer, but it just seems that the hops don't really come out of my brew as much as I'd like.
One thing I was just wondering is, can I process my hops in a separate vessel and then add them to the wort once it's done boiling, or maybe the last N minutes of the boil? I'm thinking about taking a pot from the kitchen, boiling the bittering hops for 90 minutes, and then doing the flavor/aroma hops for the appropriate time, without a container and just straining it off. The smaller volume of liquid I'd be dealing with would be a lot less difficult to strain, and I'm betting that the hops would be much better infused into the smaller volume of water.
A concern with that theory is, would it be possible to saturate the smaller volume of liquid? Perhaps the PH in the small kettle would be too high for the hops to extract all of the flavors as they should.
Any thoughts?
The thing that concerns me about those balls is, when I go to clean them, I look at the remains of the hops in the ball and wonder if they were extracted enough.
Maybe I just haven't used enough hops to really make a difference in the taste of the beer, but it just seems that the hops don't really come out of my brew as much as I'd like.
One thing I was just wondering is, can I process my hops in a separate vessel and then add them to the wort once it's done boiling, or maybe the last N minutes of the boil? I'm thinking about taking a pot from the kitchen, boiling the bittering hops for 90 minutes, and then doing the flavor/aroma hops for the appropriate time, without a container and just straining it off. The smaller volume of liquid I'd be dealing with would be a lot less difficult to strain, and I'm betting that the hops would be much better infused into the smaller volume of water.
A concern with that theory is, would it be possible to saturate the smaller volume of liquid? Perhaps the PH in the small kettle would be too high for the hops to extract all of the flavors as they should.
Any thoughts?
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