Rehydrate whole leaf hops?

[discndyno]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anybody has ever tried rehydrating whole leaf hops before using them to prevent them from robbing you of wort. I looked around the forum quite a bit but couldn't find anything. My thoughts on the idea:

-It would probably be more useful for dry hopping than kettle additions. It's easy enough to just add more water to the boil (although it still might help raise your gravity a bit if you are using tons of hops in the boil)

-Obviously, any late addition/flameout/dry hops would need to be rehydrated in water that had first been boiled/cooled.

-I'm not sure if utilization would be affected (for better or worse).

Thanks in advance for any replies. I (like many others I suspect) have gotten a lot of information here, and I'm very grateful and happy to finally be contributing ideas as well!

 

[unionrdr]

Don't do it,unless you're going to use the liquid to. Otherwise,it'll soak the oils out of them before you use them,to my thinking...

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

No.

Just account for lost volumes pre-boil/pre-dry hop.

Focus on target points and forget about volumes. If you consistently come out with lower volumes then you consistently have more reasons to brew more batches.

 

[AiredAle]

I doubt that this would particularly helpful since the wort retained by whole hops is held in the spaces between the leaves (think sponges) not absorbed into the leaves. Putting the water soaked hops into the wort will simply exchange the water in the hops for wort. You will end up with a slightly lower gravity, and a slightly higher volume of wort.

Better to just start with 1/2 gallon more wort than you need if you are brewing beers with lots of whole leaf hops.

 

[discndyno]

Thanks all for the input. That's the info I needed. I guess I'll just keep doing what I've been doing. Thanks!