Wet hops in a keg

[m00ps]

I've got a farmer around here that is wanting to harvest his hops in a few days. I told him we'd need to use them asap and I happen to have a black and regular IPA going which we could toss them into.

I was going to just use them as a dry hop in the fermentor, but then thought about using them in the serving keg like I do with dried whole cone hops. I usually leave them in for the life of the keg.

Anyone done this before? Im guessing no sanitation issues, but Im more worried about the fresh plant material doing something weird from sitting in beer for weeks

 

[m00ps]

Sounds like I've got till this thursday to make a decision. I'll try bumping again tomorrow if no one's chimed in

 

[joefarmer]

I plan on wet hopping a serving keg of hoppy wheat in about a week from now when my Cascade is ready to harvest. I really don't know what to expect but I hope it's like last year's New Holland wet hop.

 

[JF_HBrews]

I've done this, added fresh/wet Cascade hops, to a keg along with a small amount of other dry hops. I thought it was nice, there was a definite more green flavor to it though. But, that's what I enjoyed about it. My beer also had some of the wet hops added at flameout.

 

[m00ps]

I've done this, added fresh/wet Cascade hops, to a keg along with a small amount of other dry hops. I thought it was nice, there was a definite more green flavor to it though. But, that's what I enjoyed about it. My beer also had some of the wet hops added at flameout.

Thanks man!

So you left it in until the keg was empty without "unpleasant" hop flavors? I use a lot of hops in most of my ipas so I'm used to them tasting aggressive right after tapping them. I keg hop every ipa I make now, but I've been using dried whole cones due to several citations about grassy unpleasant flavors.

You didn't get any of that or mold with wet hops sitting in there?

 

[JF_HBrews]

Yep, I left it in the keg until kicked. The flavor was grassy or green as in something you would be happy eating and not the day old grass clippings or swampy vegetal flavors or other unpleasant flavors. I dry hop in the keg for all of my APA and IPA's as well. I'm looking forward to hearing about your results!

 

[WestMichBrewer]

Thanks man!

You didn't get any of that or mold with wet hops sitting in there?

Don't these hops go into the finished beer in the keg? I would think the dry hops would be wet by that process too, so I wouldn't expect any more mold due to the "wetness" of the fresh hops.
Now if you left those wet hops laying around in a ziploc bag for a week or something before putting them in the beer...

I'm anxious to hear your outcome.

 

[JF_HBrews]

How did you like it?

 

[m00ps]

It worked pretty well, I ended up using them in a black IPA. The keg only sat for a few weeks before I bottled the remaining beer from the keg using a beer gun. I needed to make space in the kegerator. So I cant really speak to letting it sit for months on the wet hops

But the beer turned out well enough to enter into a competition this weekend.