Used dry hops back into new batch?

[chicagobrew]

OK, so I had a little misstep yesterday. I mashed as normal and thought everything was going well. I had the wort on the burner and it was just starting to boil. I threw in my hops for a 60min boil and turned my back for one second to set something down. Whoosh, the damn thing boiled over and threw most of the hops back out of the pot.

Well, i didn't have any more hops in the house so I had to improvise. I had finished bottling a batch of pale ale a few minutes before and still had the dry hops in the carboy. I grabbed the bag, cut it open, and dumped the hops into the pot. Anyone done this before? Did I make a save, or throw $30 down the drain?

I was brewing a witbier and had been using 1oz of 4.7% tettnangers. I was a little low on my IBUs to start with, but probably where it would have been fine. After most of the hops boiled back out of the pot I replaced them with 1oz of 7.5% cascades from the dry hop. I know that cascade isn't appropriate for a wit, but I don't care.

Anyone got any thoughts on this one?

 

[iamopie2]

How long had they been dry hopped?

 

[chicagobrew]

They had been dry hopping for 4 days.

 

[JOHN51277]

I think you will get only partial bittering from the hops, but it is better than not having the hops in the wort at that time. Time will only tell.

 

[Yooper]

During the hop crisis a couple of years ago, I read that some homebrewers would do just that. The theory was that the bittering oils would all be there, since the hops were never boiled. I don't remember hearing of results, good or bad, though. In theory, it should work just fine.

 

[chicagobrew]

Well, that gives me some hope. If the cascade still had all of the insoluble resins I'd overshoot the IBUs a little bit, but not too bad. If they'd lost some of the resin I might come in right on target. I'll be looking forward to tasting this when it's done.

I guess the real question is how soluble are the resins when they haven't been isomerized through boiling? I wonder if anyone's ever done any research on this. It might be an opportunity to save a couple bucks by reusing the hops.