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Afternoon,
I found some wild hops and want to use them from brewing. First i thought i would boil some water and throw a few in to get the smell and taste. Neither of those were bad but instead of the normal green color it turned the water brownish/red. Is this common? Attached are a photo of the hops
Nice!
If you google for "fresh hop tea", you can see photos of hop tea... looks to be dirty yellow to brown in the pics I looked at.
e.g.
I've never done it with hops, but tea made from fresh, deep green loquat leaves also turns a amber/brownish.
You don't get green color from hops anyway - it just looks that way because the hop pellets are broken up and suspended in the liquid. There's a WHOLE lot of reading to do on using your homegrown hops, but here are the basics:
- Hops used under typical circumstances are dried before using, even as whole leaf. Shoot for a 80% reduction in weight before using/storing.
- You need to use more whole leaf hops compared to pellet (to get the same effect), as pellets take advantage of better utilization.
- Using hops right off the bine, not dried, is called fresh hop or wet hop (depending on who you talk to). A recipe needs to account for this.
- Don't expect to know what the %AA of your hops are unless you send them into a lab for testing. For this reason, most homegrown hops are utilized for aroma/flavor, and used late in the boil. If you want to use them for bittering, shoot for the low end of the %AA range given for the variety.
