Testing hops

[Jag75]

What is the best way to check the aroma and flavor of hops? I dont want to brew a 5 gallon batch and have the hop give off bo or garlic notes. A member told me some of the Galaxy out there might not be so good and give off these notes. Would boiling in some water be enough or should I toss some DME in and then ferment a 1 gallon batch? What do you guys do? I'm looking for the easiest way .

 

[Ruint]

Providing you have enough on hand you could do a hop tea with the hops you are in question about. It will render the true flavors of the variety.....be warned though... It will be unadulterated hop flavor, which I can't say will be enjoyable

 

[OnePlate]

I make hop samplers with enough DME and hops to create 4 or 6 bottles and ferment it in 1-gal jugs. I end up with a lot of crushable beers and it scratches the brewing itch in about an hour of brew time including cleanup.

Hop teas will not give you a proper perspective on a hop's true end flavor in a beer due to the lack of interplay with malt and yeast.

 

[balrog]

Hop teas with water will give a directional clue.
Hop teas with wort will give another directional clue.
Make a 1 gallon batch of wort and split among several containers at 160F, steeping different hops for 30m during cooling then pitching same neutral yeast in all. That will give the best indication. It's a *LOT* more work and time however.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Basically make a hopped starter. Make a liter DME starter, quick boil, toss in a proportionate amount of hop at flameout (or a little cooler), steep a while when it's still hot, then chill, and either decant off or just toss a proportionate amount of yeast in there and pop an airlock on it. Doesn't need to be perfect since you're just looking for an indication of the hop character. This way you're burning a liter's worth of ingredients and that's it.

 

[bierhaus15]

There is a far simpler and more true to type method for evaluating hop character; crush and add 1 gram of said hop to a 12 oz bottle of BMC, recap, gently agitate, and then let sit out of the light at the time/temp as your normal DH process. Typically 3 days at room temp is enough. Cold crash, decant, and evaluate. Generally, if a hop tastes nice as a DH, it will be fine for the boil.

 

[couchsending]

I’ve never got BO/Onion from Galaxy. Might actually be the best most consistent hop I’ve bought on the Homebrew level actually.

You can pretty much tell as soon as you open the bag. A lot of those aromatics are blatantly obvious. It’s rare that you run something and it smells good then use it and it ends up crappy.

Everyone else is recommending a hot method of testing, I personally think doing a dry hop test is a better indication of what the hop will add to the beer especially from an aroma perspective. Just make an extract or small all grain batch, ferment it, then either split it and add different hops to different containers.

You could also just pull off a certain size of your ferment. Let it ferment out then add some pellets to that. Depending on how you time things it would at least give you a short time to evaluate what the hops bring to the table. The time for extraction is rather short.

If it’s a highly hopped beer a dry hopping test with pellets will be a better indication of of what the hops will add to your finished beer IMHO vs doing a test that involves heating to simulate adding those hop to the boil/WP.. So many of those compounds will get blown off/transformed during fermentation.

 

[Jag75]

Hey guys I really appreciate the replies. I think I'll go with a BMC dry hop test. That seems like the easiest route . The Galaxy is at flameout and dry hop stage so this should give me a good insight. Also I guess it makes sense that if it smells good when opening the package it should be fine . I have a pound of it and I will make 1oz packs with my new vacuum sealer.