Wet Hop Recipe!!!

[rthiessen]

Hello,

I have harvested 1lb 3.7 ounces of fresh Cascades and I need to brew this afternoon and have never done a wet hop beer. See below for my recipe and questions I have. Appreciate the advice as I plan to mash in in the next 2 hrs!!

11 lbs Pale 2 Row
1 oz Cascade(pellet) 60 min
1lb 3.7 ounces(19.7 ounces) Wet Cascades 20 min-0 min
1056 Yeast

Basically this is SMaSH recipe I came up with to use my fresh Cascades that I picked yesterday. I have a 7 gal brew kettle that works great for my 5 gallon recipes. However, if I am using so much wet hops, won't my kettle overflow? I usually boil with 6-6.5 gallons and I think adding all the wet hops could impact the capacity of my kettle.

If that will cause my kettle to overflow, should I do a split boil? If so, whats the best way to do that?

I could also bitter with Columbus hops but wanted to stick with Cascades for the entire recipe. And I plan to just add the wet hops continuously during the last 20 min

Thanks!!

 

[BeerEngineer15]

I did a wet hopped beer last year with 2 pounds of Crystal hops. The amount of space needed for this much volume of hops is impressive. Your kettle may be a little small but it shouldn't overflow.

Since you don't know the actual statistics on the hops that you harvested it may be best to use those as a whirlpool addition only. Make sure that your bittering addition is sufficient to get the bitterness where you want it.

I wouldn't bother with a split batch, it would be more headache than it would be worth IMO. One tip that I had is make sure that you are bagging your wet hop additions. They will be much easier to get out of the beer before you add it to your carboy. Good luck and keep me updated! I love wet hop beers and every fall I get excited to get shipments from people in the PNW!

 

[rthiessen]

Thanks for the advice. I collected 7 gallons of wort and was actually able to borrow my friends 10 gal kettle. I plan to bag the wet hops. I have 25 oz of wet hops that I plan to use between 20 min and whirlpool. And I plan to use 1 oz of Cascade to bitter. Should I add more bittering? Should I do 12 oz of wet hops at 15 min, then the other 13 oz at whirlpool?

I am in the process of getting the wort to boil now!!

 

[BeerEngineer15]

The more for the whirlpool the better, with homegrown hops you won't know the AA or even the flavor of the hops. Cascade grown in my backyard taste very different than the cascade from commercial growers. Not a bad thing, just different

 

[tmorrell]

I'm curious how this will turn out. I just brewed a batch on friday using a hopshot for bittering, hop pellets during the boil at around 20min , and then whirlpooled about 12 ounces of wet cascade hops straight from the vine. I didn't bag the wet hops, but was planning to rack this batch to a secondary to be conditioned on some nectarines. I might skip the nectarine step and use it on next week's batch, but either way I'm gonna need to figure out a way to transfer this dry/wet hop brew without constantly clogging up with hop cones.

 

[rthiessen]

My beer has been fermenting for over a week and I took a gravity reading on Monday. The beer tastes good and there is a 'grassy' taste. But I like it. I think that was to be expected. I plan to transfer my beer into two 3 gal fermenters so I can dry hop one with my homegrown/dried Cascade hops and see how that impacts the flavor and aroma.

I also have more Cascades on the vines that will be ripe soon and plan to try another wet hop beer. Maybe the same recipe with a few changes. Using bags for the wet hops during the boil certainly made it very easy for cleanup and keeping extra particulates out of the fermenter.

 

[BeerEngineer15]

The grassy note is probably from all the vegetative materials that got thrown into the kettle. That's why I only added my wet hops to my whirlpool. I figured (guessed really) that boiling the wet hops would give that grassy note while just a warm soak wouldn't pick up too much flavor.