How to tell if hops are stale?

[hezagenius]

I ordered a pound each of Nelson and Galaxy and neither bag had a vacuum seal or seemed to be airtight. I cut the tops off and tried to seal them with a vacuum sealer but I couldn't get them to hold a seal. Are there any ways to tell if hops are stale or oxidized?

 

[Timdogg]

I don't know about stale but when they are bad there is no way you'll miss it they will smell sour with no hop aroma

 

[atoughram]

Stale and oxidized hops wont be green anymore, they turn yellow... I should see if I have any to take pictures of.

 

[JKaranka]

You do have to keep your hops badly for quite a time for them to become properly stale. They will get old in a dry place and not sealed in a few months, but other than that, they just lose 'freshness' rather than going properly off.

 

[hezagenius]

So if they still have the hop smell, they should be OK? They looked normal but the smell just wasn't as powerful as I was expecting.

 

[filthyastronaut]

I would maybe compensate by adding more of them then you were planning, but even with dry hopping the way the hops smell right out of the bag isn't necessarily what they will be like in a finished product. You'd be fine just using them as normal, I'd say.