This hop shortage thing got me interested in growing my own hops, and now I just want to do it because it sounds fun. But I've always used pellet hops for several reasons: they stay fresh longer, they are easy to weigh out, and most of all...they don't soak up wort. It seems to me that if I were to make an IPA, I lose half my beer to the hops. So I was thinking I might be able to grind up my hops somehow to pelletize them and get around that problem. How would I go about doing this? Is it worth it? Maybe there is another solution to wort-soaking....
Pelletizing Homegrown Hops
- Thread starter mew
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WBC
Well-Known Member
I thought about doing that too but after reading about how you have to set up a trellis, soil type, growing region and watering etc it looks like you will be required to watch over them very close to be able to get max 2 LBs of hops per plant per season. The first year you may not get any.
www.freshops.com/garden.html
http://byo.com/feature/116.html
If someone already does then please chime in.
www.freshops.com/garden.html
http://byo.com/feature/116.html
If someone already does then please chime in.
Pellets are made by removing part of the flower and compacting the rest under high pressure.
My former brewing buddy would bag the hops for the boil and then use a can crusher to squeeze the last of the wort out. I'm really amazed we only had two infected batches in three years. He did like hops.
Anybody with a pasta maker feeling brave?
My former brewing buddy would bag the hops for the boil and then use a can crusher to squeeze the last of the wort out. I'm really amazed we only had two infected batches in three years. He did like hops.
Anybody with a pasta maker feeling brave?
WBC
Well-Known Member
I thought about using a food processor and then sqeezing through a meat grinder with the right size holes and then drying them in a food dehidrator. That's a lot of work though unless you have enough hops.
I use a jumbo strainer bag in the primary bucket to catch my hops as I pour the wort into the fermenter. Then I just wring the bag to extract the wort from the hops. Gives me the benefits of free floating hops in the kettle but the ease of hops bags. Ofcourse if you do 10gal batches I'm not going to recommend trying to pour 10gal of wort.
Craig
Craig
