Dry Hopping – Whole books have been written about dry hopping, but adding hops to the fermentor or keg is relatively straightforward. One important point is to wait until primary fermentation is done, so you don’t blow off the aromatics you’re trying to capture.
Hops selection is important: Go for good-quality flavor or aroma hops. Pellets, leaf, or plugs are all fine, but I prefer pellets because they’re easier to deal with, especially when it’s time to get them out of the carboy. A standard rule of thumb is to use about 0.5 oz (14 g) of hops per gallon (3.8 l).
Three to 7 days is a good target for contact time. Any less and you won’t pick up as much hops aroma, while extended periods can produce an undesirable grassy profile. If you grow your own hops, there is a slight variation, “wet hopping,” that is worth trying.
Using fresh hops that haven’t been dehydrated offers a unique character. Given the higher water content, aim for about 2.5 oz (71 g) per gallon. Also, it’s generally better to shorten the contact time. Dry-Hopping Experiment This experiment calls for yet another variation on our control recipe. Brew it as written, but after primary fermentation, add another 0.5 oz (14 g) of Amarillo, ideally as pellets.
Allow 3 days contact time before racking off the hops residue. Give it a little time to settle before bottling as usual.
Contents
How much hops to add to 23 litres of beer?
The 5 – 10 – 15 Rule for Dry Hopping IPAs
Dry Hopping. If you don’t know what this means, in a nutshell, it’s where hops are added to the brew once it’s in the fermenter, like a steeping process. Why do it? It maximises the hop aromas and flavours in your brew. Luke is often asked for tips on how to dry hop beer, and he has a simple rule of thumb to follow: The 5 – 10 – 15 Rule.
- It’s a pretty simple thing to remember, right? This is what it means.
- If you’re making a Pale Ale, add 5 grams of hops per litre.
- For an IPA, add 10 grams per litre.
- For a Double IPA, add 15 grams per litre.
- Easy, right? Something to keep in mind is that the more dry hop you add, the less your final volume will be – those hops are thirsty devils! We’d love for you to give it a try – let us know how you get on.
Cheers! : The 5 – 10 – 15 Rule for Dry Hopping IPAs
How many pounds of hops does it take to make beer?
About half a pound for a very lightly hopped beer, up to about 3 or 4 pounds for a hoppy double IPA. A typical craft pale ale probably has about 1.5 pounds. But this varies tremendously depending on the brewery and the beer.
How many grams of hops do you usually add per 1 l of beer?
The general rule is 1 to 10 grams of hops per litre of beer produced will be enough to flavour your beer.
How many hops are in a 5 gallon IPA?
Dry Hops – Any of these beers benefit from dry hopping, although not all American pale ales are dry hopped. Dry hopping adds hop aroma to fermented beer, as well as contributing other plant compounds that cause a haze in beer. A good rule of thumb for dry hopping 5 gallons (19 L) of American pale ale is to use between 0.5–1.5 oz.
How do you calculate how much hops to use?
Dry Hopping – Whole books have been written about dry hopping, but adding hops to the fermentor or keg is relatively straightforward. One important point is to wait until primary fermentation is done, so you don’t blow off the aromatics you’re trying to capture.
Hops selection is important: Go for good-quality flavor or aroma hops. Pellets, leaf, or plugs are all fine, but I prefer pellets because they’re easier to deal with, especially when it’s time to get them out of the carboy. A standard rule of thumb is to use about 0.5 oz (14 g) of hops per gallon (3.8 l).
Three to 7 days is a good target for contact time. Any less and you won’t pick up as much hops aroma, while extended periods can produce an undesirable grassy profile. If you grow your own hops, there is a slight variation, “wet hopping,” that is worth trying.
Using fresh hops that haven’t been dehydrated offers a unique character. Given the higher water content, aim for about 2.5 oz (71 g) per gallon. Also, it’s generally better to shorten the contact time. Dry-Hopping Experiment This experiment calls for yet another variation on our control recipe. Brew it as written, but after primary fermentation, add another 0.5 oz (14 g) of Amarillo, ideally as pellets.
Allow 3 days contact time before racking off the hops residue. Give it a little time to settle before bottling as usual.
Do hops increase ABV?
The effect of dry-hopping on fermentable sugars and ABV – The Brewers Journal Housed in a Grade II listed mill in the spiritual heart of the industrial revolution, Northern Monk takes thousands of years of monastic brewing heritage and tradition and combines them with the best of modern brewing techniques along with local and internationally sourced ingredients.
Northern Monk started brewing in 2014 and has since become an institution of innovation in brewing, with a focus on quality, which is largely monitored in-house using a variety of lab equipment including the CDR BeerLab.With this in mind, it is no surprise that head brewer Brian Dickson and Production Manager Colin Stronge were keen to use their BeerLab in our latest study to investigate the effect of dry-hopping on fermentable sugars and ABV. The project
An article published in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing in 1941 by Janicki, J. et al discussed the presence of diastatic activity in hops and how this might affect secondary fermentation on in cask beer. Their experiments consisted of taking samples of starch dissolved in pH adjusted water (to approximate beer pH) and adding Saaz hops at a rate of approximately 40 g/L.
- The research discovered that maltose was produced from dry-hopping in mg quantities in just five hours, suggesting that the starch in solution was being broken down by enzymes in the hops.
- Ron Pattinson points out in his blog (March 2018), that Brown and Morris also commented that hops contain a noticeable percentage of glucose and fructose (around 3%), which was also shown to be fully fermentable after extraction from the hops and addition of yeast.
Part two of Ron’s blog post also revisits the work published by Janicki et al, further discussing the ability of hops to break down starch into fermentable sugars. To best investigate these two effects, we picked three beer styles of increasing dry-hop quantities, namely a session IPA, an American IPA and a DIPA.
- The increasing levels of dry-hopping – all via a hop rocket – should give increasing levels of diastatic activity and fermentable sugar addition and potentially an increase in ABV.
- The results For the study, a sample was taken from the FV every 30 minutes, with two samples taken before dry-hopping and two samples taken after dry-hopping.
All three beers were dry-hopped for 3-hours using a hop rocket and all samples taken were analysed for ABV, fermentable sugars (g/L), Starch (g/L), pH, and bitterness (IBU) using the CDR BeerLab. The starch measured on the BeerLab will include a mixture of complex starch molecules not broken down in the mash as well as some longer chain dextrin molecules. American IPA and DIPA The two most notable results came from the American IPA and the DIPA as expected, both beers showing high initial starch which drops as fermentable sugars increase. As shown in Figures 1 and 2 the American IPA has a starch concentration beginning around 2 g/L and dropping to a level of around 1.5 g/L, this drop is exaggerated in the DIPA with a drop from around 1.8 g/L to just over 0.5 g/L.
The fermentable sugar concentration looks slightly more variable with an initial drop in value followed by a peak, this can be explained by yeast being roused back into suspension from circulation of the hop rocket and absorbing some of this sugar. The peak in sugar concentration could come either from the diastatic power of hops on the residual starch or from the addition of fermentable sugars in the hops themselves.
Figure 1 Figure 1. American IPA Sugar Vs Starch Figure 2
Figure 2. DIPA Sugar Vs Starch Figure 3
Figure 3. Session IPA Sugar Vs Starch Session IPA As mentioned previously, the Session IPA was dry-hopped prior to initiating the hop rocket and as can be seen in Figure 3 the starch does not exhibit a drop in concentration, there is however a slight rise in sugar concentration.
This may be due to the initial dry-hopping breaking down all of the simple starch and leaving only complex starch molecules, meaning that the second dry-hopping by hop rocket could not break down any more starch, but could add some sugar. It is clear to see in Figure 1 and 2 that hops are having a demonstrable effect on starch reduction and sugar production, which ultimately will lead to further fermentation in the beer – potentially giving a higher ABV than expected in the finished/packaged beer compared to during dry-hopping.
Apart from the natural variation of ABV on the BeerLab (±0.1) there was no significant increase in ABV during the dry-hopping, however as can be seen in Table 2 there is an increase in ABV value in the finished, packaged beer. The increase for the Session IPA is negligible, however for the American IPA and the DIPA there is a significant jump in ABV, which correlates with the Sugar Vs Starch graphs above. To confirm accuracy of the finished beer results, the DIPA was tested by distillation and Density meter giving a result of 9.99% ABV. Conclusion It is apparent that the addition of dry-hops to a beer at the end of natural fermentation will contribute to a reduction in residual starch and an increase of fermentable sugars.
This can be explained by two effects; diastatic enzyme activity present in the hops, breaking down starch into fermentable sugars; contribution of fermentable sugars from the hops themselves. By increasing fermentable sugars near the end of fermentation, yeast will continue to ferment beyond when the brewer believes fermentation has finished, causing an increase in ABV, which may not be accounted for with gravity readings.
References Janicki J., Kotasthane W.V., Parker A., Walker T.K.; J. Inst. Brew.; 1941; Vol.47; pp.24 – 36. Brown H.T., Morris H.; J. Inst. Brew. (The Brewers’ Guardian); 1893; Vol.6; pp 93 – 94. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/why-dry-hop.htm : The effect of dry-hopping on fermentable sugars and ABV – The Brewers Journal
Do hops make beer lighter?
Did you know all beer is red? We don’t perceive all beer as red, of course, but deep down in its molecules, it is. Since all beer is red, what determines the color of beer? Grain is by far the strongest coloring agent in beer, and grains are colored by melanin, a rust-red pigment that drives the color of beer.
But what about Pale Ales and Imperial Stouts, you say? Some beers don’t appear red at all. As with most questions about beer, the answer involves chemistry – in fact, a number of factors can affect color, and we’ll take a closer look at all of them. We’ll also examine what beer color can (and can’t) cue us to expect in terms of flavor, as well as how beer color is measured and described.
The Chemistry of Color Two chemical reactions make grains go from pale yellow to jet black: Maillard reactions and caramelization. Maillard reactions are what you get when you start linking amino acids to sugars, usually prompted by the introduction of heat.
The resulting combinations create a wide range of flavors and aromas and are associated with darkening color. Know it or not, you’ve been chasing and enjoying these flavors your whole life: the “browning” of grains in a kiln (and wort, in the boil) is the same process that steak or toast undergoes when heated.
In beer, these Maillard reactions express most often as toasty flavors, but that’s far from exclusive: literally hundreds of perceptible flavors can be created in this process. Since the reactions generally occur at lower temperatures (100-200⁰ F, depending on the malt we’re developing), time becomes an important factor.
- Length and temperature of kilning can vary and create malts of the same color, but they may have different properties relevant to brewers (whether they can be converted in the mash, for example ).
- The second process – caramelization – is much simpler.
- Caramelization is what happens when you heat a sugar until it breaks apart.
Grains don’t naturally contain sugar, though: we need to convert the starch in the grain into sugar, so the first step in the process is getting the grain wet and heating it to about 160⁰ F. At that temperature, you’re developing sugars inside the grain.
The maltster will then ramp up the temperature to 220⁰ F or higher, and at that temperature you’re baking the sugars apart. The flavor compounds are exactly what you’d expect if you’ve ever tasted caramel: burnt sugar, butter, dark fruit and toffee. The longer the malts are caramelized, the darker they’ll get.
All caramel malts contain also non-fermentable sugars, which will add flavor but not potential alcohol. Finally, we have roasted or chocolate malts. Nothing complicated here: these are non-caramelized malts that are simply kilned at high temperatures until they’re roasted black.
They add deep colors, and usually impart coffee, chocolate and even acrid/burnt notes. Far and away, the malts chosen and their ratios within the recipe are the most important aspect of beer color. The darker the malts used, or the more pale malts used (the color builds, making the aggregate color darker), the darker the beer will be.
Even small amounts of chocolate (roasted) malt will bring on rapid color shifts, while pale malts in sufficient quantities can still make for a very dark beer. Time is Color An underappreciated contributor to beer color isn’t even an ingredient: it’s time, As beer ages, particles in suspension within the beer – yeast, polyphenols, etc. – begin to fall to the bottom of the vessel. The remaining beer will reflect less light, making it appear darker.
- In this way, age all by itself will darken beer over time.
- Aging also creates new flavor perceptions, the most notable of which is that beers become less bitter as the isomerized alpha acids that make the beer bitter break down over time, and the malts are emphasized.
- The aging process can be accelerated by something we often associate with age in beer: oxidation.
Oxygen is a key component in the degradation of organic products and can have pronounced effects on beer color. The oxidative process that turns bananas brown has the same basic effect on your beer, and just like with stale fruit or bread, you’ll notice flavor differences.
Flavors will first become muted, and if oxidation is more severe, off-flavors like cardboard or wet paper can develop. Not all aged, oxidative flavors are bad, of course. The sherry or vinous flavors that result from oxidized melanoidins can be very pleasant in amber or dark beers. By and large, though, oxygen is the enemy, and if you see a beer that’s darker than it should be (a deep red IPA, for example), be on the lookout for off-flavors from age or oxidation.
The Usual (and Unusual) Suspects So far it’s been malts (and how kilned/toasted/roasted they are, and the amount used) and time that predict beer color. A host of other factors contribute as well, just to lesser degrees. In no particular order:
Boil Length: The longer a beer is boiled, the more Maillard browning occurs. pH Level: A more acidic mash results in a paler beer thanks to the chemistry of water. It’s also possible for some molecules in fermenting beer to lose their color as the pH lowers, causing the color of the beer to lighten slightly. Yeast Strain: “Low-flocculating” yeasts stay in suspension longer, catching more light, whereas “high-flocculating” yeasts drop clear more quickly. Hops Usage: Hops – especially as the amount used increases – leave behind polyphenols and acids. Depending on the beer, this can create haze that lightens the perceived color of the beer. Specialty Ingredients: This should be obvious but adding new ingredients with different colors of their own can skew the color of your beer! I still remember the blood-red cranberry ale my wife made; it was a beautifully unusual color in beer. Many fruited sours take on exotic colors thanks to fruit or syrup additions, adding to their visual and flavor interest.
What Color Tells Us – and What It Doesn’t Color tells us surprisingly little about what a beer will taste like. It gives us probabilities, not certainties. A lighter beer is more likely to feature light grainy flavors: biscuit, bread, very light toast.
- As a beer moves towards amber and copper, we’re more likely to perceive caramel and toffee flavors.
- And, naturally, dark brown or black beer is more likely to showcase cocoa and coffee flavors.
- These are not conclusive, though: since color can be so easily shifted down the color scale by even minute amounts of roasted malts, it’s perfectly possible to use a relatively low-flavor-impact chocolate malt (Midnight Wheat, for example) and adjust color without adding flavor.
Color can be misleading. A good flavor wheel can give you approximations, but take it with a grain of grain! Probably the most common misperception is that color predicts alcohol content. If beer were brewed using only a single type of malt, it would: as grain was added to the grist and more sugar added to the wort, the color would darken at a generally linear rate.
However, it’s perfectly possible to make a double-digit ABV Belgian Tripel that’s pale gold by using only pale malts and simple sugars (which may add no color at all). By the same token, it’s possible to produce a German Schwarzbier (black lager) under 4 percent ABV by using small doses of roasted malts.
Assume nothing about ABV based on color – doing so can be, frankly, dangerous. Defining Color Finally, we turn to measuring color in beer. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of science that went into developing the scale we use! Beer color is measured on the Standard Reference Method (SRM) scale.
SRM is calculated by passing light of a specific wavelength through a specific “thickness” of beer (one centimeter) and measuring the amount of light absorbed by the beer. Beers at 2-5 on the SRM scale are considered pale/gold and include styles like Pilsner and light lagers. Beer in the 7-15 range is considered amber, and styles include Oktoberfests, American Amber Ales and (paradoxically) English Pale Ales.
At 16-25, we reach copper and brown, with styles like Bock and English Brown Ales. Above 25, we’re parsing shades of deep brown and black, topping out (in practical terms) at about 40, though the SRM scale theoretically runs well into the 70s and 80s in the most-roasted beers like Imperial Stout! Above 40, though, the beer is effectively black and opaque.
Do hops make beer last longer?
Hops help to keep beer fresher, longer ; help beer retain its head of foam—a key component of a beer’s aroma and flavor; and, of course, add ‘hoppy’ aroma, flavor, and bitterness.
How long do hops last in beer?
Hops – A number of variables effect the stability of hops over time, and rates of degradation will differ from one hop variety to the next. That being said, exposure to heat and oxygen are among the biggest causes of quality issues during hop storage. Generally speaking, an unopened package of hop pellets that was properly flushed with nitrogen can last two to four years in refrigerated temperatures and up to five when frozen.
- Whole hops under the same conditions are less stable and will remain stable for six to 12 months.
- If opened, both pellets and whole hops should be packaged air tight with a vacuum sealer and stored either in refrigerator or freezer temperatures (the colder the better).
- If vacuum sealing is not an option, pellets will generally be okay in a plastic bag with most of the air squeezed out for two weeks at refrigeration temperatures and five weeks when frozen.
Whole hops that are not vacuum sealed are recommended to be used immediately. Learn more about hops in our Let’s Brew section.
Does more hops mean more bitter?
Fact #2: Hoppy vs bitter beer is achieved through the timing of hops in the brew – In general, the more hops added early in the brewing process the greater potential for bitterness in the beer. Adding fewer hops or boiling for less time can reduce the bitterness by affecting how much of the alpha-acids (isohumulones) are extracted from the hops. When and how the hops are added affect the bitterness and flavor of the finished beer (Photo: cerdadebbie from Pixabay ) Boiling hops destroys many of the terpenes which create aromatic flavors in the beer. To keep those, some hops must be added later during the boil which reduces the amount of time the essential oils are exposed to heat. OR, these flavorful terpenes are added back to the brew through a dry-hopping process. Hops added early = Bitter Hops added later = Hoppy HOOHHOPS>COM
What is the ratio of hops?
Hops are the ingredient in beer that provides its backbone of bitterness, increases its microbiological stability, helps stabilize its foam, and greatly influences its taste and aroma. For if your ale may endure a fortnight, your Beere through the benefit of the Hoppe, shall continue a moneth, and what grace it yieldeth to the teaste, all men may judge that have sense in their mouths Reginald Scot, The Perfite Platform for a Hoppe Garden, 1576.
- Hops are the flowers or “cones” of Humulus lupulus, a Latin diminutive meaning roughly “a low little wolf,” so-named for the plant’s tactile qualities, prodigious growth, and wide range.
- The Humulus genus belongs to the family of Cannabinaceae, which includes Cannabis (hemp, marijuana) and Celtis (Hackberry).
Hops are native to the Northern Hemisphere in the temperate zones of Europe, western Asia, and North America and are thought to have originated in China. They are now grown commercially in both hemispheres between roughly 30 and 52 degrees latitude. They are hardy plants that can survive cold winters with temperatures as low as –30°C (roughly –20°F).
- There are five recognized taxonomic varieties in the genus Humulus: lupulus are European hops; cordifolius are Japanese hops; and lupuloides, neomexicanus, and pubescens are North American natives.
- Noble” hops is a historical and commercial term, which is somewhat arbitrarily assigned to four distinct hop landraces, that is, plants that were domesticated in their respective areas and have become open-pollinated, genetically isolated populations there.
These are Hallertauer Mittelfrueh from the Hallertau region of Bavaria; Tettnanger from Tettnang in Germany near Lake Constance; Spalt from Bavaria in Germany, south of Nuremburg; and Saaz from the Žatec region of the Czech Republic. See hallertau hop region, noble hops, spalt hop region, tettnang hop region, and žatec hop region,
Many hop varieties released in the past century can trace their lineage to at least one of these nobles. Although these four noble hops have been revered for their pleasing aroma profile and gentle bitterness, with alpha acid to beta acid ratios of 1:1, they are notoriously low yielding and highly disease prone.
In the trade, hops come in two basic market classes, bittering and aroma hops, with relatively few hops also being marketed as dual-purpose varieties. Bittering, or kettle, hops are added to the wort near the beginning of the boil; and aroma, or finishing, hops, are added any time from 30 minutes before the end of the boil to just at shut-down.
They can also be added to the whirlpool, or even later. See boiling and whirlpool, The addition of hops to fermented beer is called dry hopping. See dry hopping, This practice adds highly volatile hop essential oils to the beer—oils that in bittering hops evaporate into the brew stack during the kettle boil and may even be scrubbed out of wort during fermentation.
The intensity of hoppiness in beer is a matter of beer style specifications and the personality of the brewer. See beer style and bitterness, Some mass-market American lagers, for instance, refreshing as they may be to many consumers, can leave the drinker feeling as if the brewer had just waved a single hop cone over the kettle.
- At the same time, some craft-brewed beers clearly push the envelope of hoppiness to the edge of human bitterness tolerance, with the brewers apparently reveling in an almost punishing hop character.
- Such beers are specialty beers of growing popularity, especially in New World brewpubs, and are slowly catching on in other beer cultures around the world as well, but they are surely not for everyone.
See extreme brewing, Harvest day on a farm that grows organic hops, Ashland, Oregon. george rubaloff Ever since the discovery of hops as a suitable beer flavoring, which occurred probably in the 8th century ad, hops have been added to wort as kiln-dried whole cones. Hops need to lose their moisture as quickly as possible after they are harvested, because otherwise they start to rot within just a few hours.
- Traditionally, hop kilns were housed in oast houses, which by the 19th century had taken on a distinctive circular architecture, with conical roofs that still dot the countryside of many current and former hop-producing regions to this day.
- See oast house,
- Hops are perennial herbaceous plants that live 10 to 20 years, maintaining a perennial root, called a rhizome, a carbohydrate storage structure that is also found in ginger and the iris plant.
Each spring the rhizome sprouts a mass of bines that wrap clockwise around anything they contact. Hops grow vigorously up to 15 m (about 50 ft) tall. In most hop gardens, however, they may reach a height of 4 to 9 m (some 15 to 30 ft). During the peak of the growing season in mid-summer, hops bines may add as much as 50 cm (about 20 inches) per week.
- The bines are herbaceous, although they tend to form woody, secondary growth on the older tissue late in the season.
- They die to the ground in winter.
- Unlike vines, which have tendrils, a bine adheres to its support with its large number of rigid, hooked stem hairs called trichomes.
- These hold the bine to a substrate.
Unfortunately for many hop workers, the oils secreted by trichomes can also irritate the skin. Botanical illustration of Humulus Iupulus, teh scientific name for the common hop. German, c.1850. PIKE MICROBREWERY MUSEUM, SEATTLE, WA. Hops are dioecious (Greek for “two houses”), meaning there are separate male and female plants. Only seedless female hop cones are used in the brewing industry, which is why growers take care to control male plant pollinators in regions where hops are indigenous or cultivated.
Male hop plants are less desirable, because they have very small cones that contain only 1/150th of the amount of resin that female cones contain. They also lack some of the essential aroma oils so prized by brewers and beer drinkers. Male plants are tolerated in hop yards only when an open-pollination breeding project is underway.
Occasionally a hop plant may turn out to be monoecious, with both male and female flowers on the same plant. But such plants produce only infertile seeds. Modern breeding efforts have produced triploid hop varieties, such as the popular Willamette. See willamette (hop),
- Such hops are naturally seedless and thus infertile, which, however, is not a problem because most commercial hop varieties nowadays are clonally propagated by cuttings of their rhizomes or some softwood stem tissue; these easily form roots if just kept moist for a few weeks.
- See hop breeding and selection,
The hop flower, or cone, is botanically a “catkin.” It is an inflorescence that contains a central support called a strig. The strig holds 20 to 60 bracteoles (petals/sepals) along its axis, each with two female floral parts at its base to form a cone-shape flower.
The size of the flower varies among hop varieties from an average 2 to 3.5 cm (approximately 0.8 to 1.5 inches) to very large ones of more than 5 cm (2 inches), with shapes varying from round to oblong and somewhat boxy. Lupulin glands, also at the base of the bracteoles, produce the yellow to golden substance called lupulin.
It is in the lupulin that the resins—including alpha and beta acids—as well as essential oils are concentrated once the hop cone has ripened. Alpha acids, also called humulones, which are the sources of most of the bitterness in beer, make up about 3% to 4% of the cone’s weight in aroma varieties.
- In superalpha bittering varieties—which are the most recent products of many breeding programs around the world—they may make up more than 20%.
- During the wort boil, alpha acids are converted to water-soluble iso-alpha acids or isohumulones, the true bitter compounds in beer.
- This conversion, or isomerization, is traditionally one of the main objectives of wort boiling and the boiling time must usually be long enough (at least 45 minutes for most hop varieties) to allow isomerization to take place.
That said, isomerization can take place in the absence of boiling, so long as the temperature is high enough; mechanical action, surface area of the hop material, and the contact time are critical factors as well. The unit of measurement for hop bittering potential is the International Bitterness Unit (IBU).
See international bitterness units (ibus), Alpha acids are divided into three analogues—compounds of very similar molecular structures: the desirable humulone and adhumulone and the undesirable cohumulone. Cohumulone may make up anywhere between roughly from 15% to 50% of a hop’s total alpha acid content, depending on variety.
It can also vary greatly from one growing year to the next in the same variety. High cohumulone levels in hops tend to result in lower foam stability and a harsher, often unpleasant bitterness. They are also usually associated with poor aroma profiles. Postcard, c.1920, showing workers standing bext to a large sack of hops on a farm in Kent, England. A hop press mechanically packed the hops into these sacks, known as “pockets.” PIKE MICROBREWERY MUSEUM, SEATTLE, WA. As the alpha acids were discovered to actually be three related molecules, the same discovery was made for beta acids, which also come in three analogs: lupulone, colupulone, and adlupulone.
The character of a hop, in terms of its bittering and aroma potential, is largely determined by its ratio of alpha to beta acids. The most sought-after aroma varieties tend to have a ratio close to 1:1. Most cultivated hop varieties, however, have a ratio closer to 2:1. Hops with much higher alpha-to-beta ratio are, of course, the modern superalpha varieties.
Prior to the 1950s, alpha and beta acids were also called soft resins by virtue of their solubility in hexane, a solvent. Techniques were not developed to separate alpha acids into the three analogues until much later. In early accounts, therefore, all alpha acids were simply referred to as “humulone” and all beta acids as “lupulone.” Lupulone provides potent antimicrobial properties and is active against Gram-negative bacteria such as Staphylococcus and Clostridium.
- Essential oils in hops are responsible for the distinct hop aroma.
- Some fresh hops smell very citrusy, such as Cascade, which has a grapefruit–piney bouquet, whereas others, such as Strisselspalt, have a more floral bouquet.
- The main essential oils in hops are humulene, which has a woody, balsamic aroma; carophyllene, which has a black-pepper, spicy aroma; myrcene, which has a geranium-like, floral aroma; and farnesene, which has a gardenia-like floral aroma.
Of these, farnesene is often either completely absent or represented in only miniscule quantities. Other essential oils, such as linalool with its citrus-like bergamot aroma, although present in only tiny amounts, may have a disproportionately high impact on the overall aroma of certain hop varieties.
Aroma descriptor | Essential oil/odorant | |
---|---|---|
Fruity | Citrus, bergamot Citrus, balsamic Citrus Citrus, soapy Pineapple Pineapple Pineapple Apple-like Raspberry Black currant Fruity Fruity | Linalool Limonene Octanal Nonanal Ethyl 2-methylpropanoate (3E,5Z)-Undeca-1,3,5-triene (3E,5Z,9E)-Undeca-1,3,5,9-tetraene (+ /–)-Ethyl 2-methylbutanoate 4-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)-2-butanone 4-Methyl-4-sulfanylpentan-2-one Methyl 2-methylbutanoate Ethyl 2-methylbutanoate |
Floral | Gardenia Geranium leaf Geranium leaf Rose Minty | Farnesene Myrcene (5Z)-Octa-1,5-dien-3-one Geraniol 2-Phenylethyl 3-methylbutanoate |
Spicy | Black pepper Aniseed, sweet Soup seasoning | Carophyllene Anethole 3-Hydroxy-4,5-dimethyl-2(5H)-furanone(sotolone) |
Vegetative | Grassy Muscat-like, green Bell pepper Cucumber Cooked potato | (3Z)-Hex-3-enal (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol 2-Isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (2E,6Z)-Nona-2,6-dienal 3-(Methylsulfanyl)-propanal |
Nutty | Almond, roasted | 3-Methyl-2-butene-1-thiol |
Caramelized | Honey Honey Sweet, honey Sweet | Phenylacetaldehyde Phenylacetic acid trans-Cinnamaldehyde 3-Hydroxy-2-methyl-4-pyrone |
Woody | Balsamic Vanilla | α-Humulene Vanillin Vanilla |
Earthy | Mushroom Mushroom, balsamic | Oct-1-en-3-one Germacrene |
Chemical | Cabbage Catty, thiol-like Rancid, cheesy Rancid, sweaty | Dimethyltrisulfane 3-Mercaptohexan-1-ol Butanoic acid (Z)-3-Hexenoic acid |
Microbiological | Cheesy Cheesy Fatty | 3-Methylbutanoic acid Pentanoic acid (2E,4E)-Nona-2,4-dienal |
Source: Various studies conducted at Weihenstephan in Germany and the Kyoto University in Japan. See weihenstephan, Until well into the high Middle Ages, before hops had become the beer flavoring of choice just about everywhere, brewers used a large variety of herbs, known as gruit in medieval Europe, as well as strange items such as oxen gall, soot, bark, and mushrooms to spice their beers and sometimes to cover up off-flavors.
- See gruit,
- The presence of hops can be document virtually everywhere where humans had migrated, but it took thousands of years for hops to make the leap from the wild into the brew kettle.
- The first written description of a hop garden comes from Hallertau.
- It dates from 768 ad,
- See hallertau,
- The first recorded use of hops in brewing dates from 822 ad when Abbot Adalhard of the Benedictine Monastery of Corbie in the Picardy, in northeastern France, made a record stating that his monks added hops to their ales.
By the 11th century hopped beer was commonplace in France, and in 1268, King Louis IX issued a decree stipulating that, in his realm, only malt and hops may be used for beer making. Britain, by contrast, seems to have resisted the joys of the hop for a few more centuries, although some early hops must have made it across the Channel, as is evidenced by the remains of a boat holding a cargo of hops and found abandoned in Gravaney, Kent.
- Carbon-dating of the timbers placed that boat into the 870s ad,
- For the most part, however, the English considered the hop plant an “unwholesome weed that promoted melancholy.” Kings Henry VI and Henry VIII both banned the use of hops in English ales altogether during their reigns.
- The latter, in the 1530s, justified his antihop stance by declaring the hop an aphrodisiac that would drive his subjects to sinful behavior.
Meanwhile, brewers on the Continent moved in exactly the opposite direction, perfecting the use of hops in their kettles. In many places, local authorities even made brewers take an oath that they would flavor their brews with nothing but hops. By the 14th century, a flourishing hop market had developed in Nuremberg, Bavaria, where the hop became known as “green gold,” a precious commodity and a source of great wealth for growers and traders alike.
- By 1516, the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV put forth the seminal Bavarian Beer Purity Law, which stipulated that brewers in the Duke’s realm may use only three ingredients in beer-making, barley, water, and hops.
- See reinheitsgebot,
- As hops won out over gruit in most parts of the Continent, it became more and more difficult to keep it out of English ales.
In fact, a 1604 English statute laments that “of late great fraudes and deceits are generally practised and used by foreiners merchants strangers and others in foreine parts beyond the seas, in the false packing of foreine hoppes and sold with leaves, stalkes, powder, sand, strawe, and with loggets of wood, drosse, and other soyle for the increase of the waight thereof, to the inriching of themselves by deceit.” These “great fraudes and deceits” apparently caused England an annual revenue loss amounting to the then-stately sum of 20,000 pounds.
- In North America, the early settlers found wild hops, which are native to the New World, but they preferred to brew with cultivated varieties that they had known back home, in the Old World, which they either imported or grew themselves from imported rhizomes.
- See american hops, history,
- Eventually, as American hop breeding programs were established in the late 1800s, European cultivars hybridized to indigenous native American hop plants started to make their appearance.
One such variety is Cluster, a hop believed to be a hybrid between English Cluster and a native American male hop plant. See cluster (hop), Hop cultivation takes advantage of the plants’ tendency to wind around any support and to produce a large amount of vegetation in a growing season.
Early hop yards in upstate New York, in the 1800s, were circular groups of plants growing up on supports that may have been made of hemp twine toward a central pole. Modern hop yards, by contrast, are laid out in a pole-and-cable grid pattern. The poles are placed in the ground at the grid intersections, with the cable connecting the pole tops in all directions.
At the beginning of every growing season, V-shape bine supports are strung from the ground to the upper supports, which allow the hop plants to climb skyward. Judicious pruning to just a few bines per plant and careful training of the shoots around the twine help to maximize yields and keep insects and pathogens in check.
- Hops are susceptible to many pests, such as downy mildew (Pseudoperonospora humuli) and powdery mildew (Podosphaera macularis formerly called Sphaerotheca humuli).
- It is now known that resistance to powdery mildew is genetically determined, which allows breeders to select for the chromosomes with that trait.
Aphids and spider mites, too, are a perennial problem in hop yards. These are usually controlled with judicious pesticide applications, good agronomic practices, and biocontrol through predatory insects. Finally, there are viruses, such as hop mosaic virus, that can cause severe crop loss and stunting in some varieties.
- This virus is spread by aphids and is nearly impossible to eradicate.
- Australia and New Zealand, because of their physical isolation from other landmasses, have entirely avoided many hop pests and diseases and are therefore havens of organic hop production.
- The future of hops in beer seems to be assured, but in a bifurcated trajectory.
Whereas the consumption of beer—especially of relatively low-hopped beer with IBU values just above the taste threshold—is rising spectacularly in many markets in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, beer consumption in traditional markets has been—and is expected to continue to be—stagnant or declining.
- In many of these mature markets, however, however, consumer preferences for aggressively bittered brews—some with IBU values at the solubility threshold of alpha acids in wort—and for beers with elaborate and complex aromas are on the rise.
- For hop breeder, growers, and traders these two seemingly conflicting trends mean that the market push for ever higher superalpha varieties, as well as the market push for ever more interesting aroma varieties, is likely to continue.
The superalpha hops will satisfy the brewing industry’s demand for generic bittering cultivated under the most economical conditions for a growth market in minimally hopped mass-market beers. The diversification of disease-resistant but much lower-yielding aroma varieties, by contrast, will cater to the high-value market for sophisticated specialty beers.
As the flavor and aroma of hops continue to bedazzle craft brewers worldwide, we may now be seeing, after more than 1,200 years of brewing with hops, the “hoppiest” beers the world has ever seen. Bibliography Hop Growers Convention. Proceedings of the Scientific Commission.2005, http://www.lfltest.bayern.de/ipz/hopfen/10585/sc05-proceedings-internet.pdf/ (accessed November 1, 2010).
Irwin, A.J., C.R. Murray, and T.D. Thompson, An investigation of the relationships between hopping rate, time of boil, and individual alpha-acid utilization. American Society of Brewing Chemists 43 (1985): 145–52. Kishimoto, T. Hop-derived odorants contributing to the aroma characteristics of beer,
- Ph.D. Dissertation.
- Yoto University, Kyoto, Japan, 2008.
- Rebecca, Kneen,
- Small scale and organic hop production,
- Http://www.crannogales.com/HopsManual.pdf/ (accessed June 1, 2008).
- Nickerson, G.B., P.A.
- Williams, and A. Haunold,
- Varietal differences in the proportions of cohumulone, adhumulone, and humulone in hops,
Journal of the Institute of Brewing 44 (1986): 91–4. Peacock, V.A., M.L. Deinzer, S.T. Likens, G.B. Nickerson, and L.A. McGill, Floral hop aroma in beer, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 29 (1981): 1265–69. Steinhaus, M., W. Wilhelm, and P. Schieberle,
- Comparison of the most odour-active volatiles in different hop varieties by application of a comparative aroma extract dilution analysis,
- European Food Research and Technology 226 (2007): 45–55.
- Tomlan, M.A.
- Tinged with gold.
- Hop culture in the United States,
- Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
Verzele, M., and D. De Keukeleire, Chemistry and analysis of hop and beer bitter acids, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishing Co, 1991.
How much hops is in an IPA?
IPAs are often highly hopped ( more than40 IBU and commonly over 60 IBU ), whereas lagers are generally far more subtly hopped (around 20-40 IBU). IBUs are international bittering units, a standardised way of quantifying bitterness in beers.
How many beers is a 7% IPA?
How much alcohol do I actually drink, anyway? – Let’s consider two of my favorite evening drinks, a 12 ounce can of Mike Hess Habitus Rye Double IPA, or a 12 ounce bottle of Bell’s Two Hearted IPA. The Habitus clocks in at 8%, and the Two Hearted is a sneaky 7%.
- I say “sneaky” both because it doesn’t taste that strong and because they don’t put the ABV in an obvious place on the bottle.
- For reference, 5% of 12 ounces is 0.6 ounces of pure alcohol.
- But 7% is,84, and 8% is 0.96 ounces of pure alcohol.
- A 12 ounce serving of 8% beer, then, is 1.6 “standard” drinks; and that’s 1.4 standard drinks for the 7% beer.
So if I have two of those in a day, I’m actually drinking 3.2 or 2.8 drinks per day. If I treat myself to a third one, I’m consuming a massive 4.8 or 4.2 standard drinks. That’s well into the “danger zone” defined by this study. If you are drinking a 5% beer in a 16 ounce pint can or on draft, that’s 1.3 drinks.
But a pint of 7% is 1.82 standard drinks, which means two pints of 7% beer is actually 3.64 standard drinks. ONE pint of 8% is 2.08 standard drinks. The gorgeous 16.9 oz bottle of 13% BBA stout I’m saving for a special occasion is a tad more than a US pint but when you do the math that one bottle contains 3.7 standard drinks.
A bomber (750 mL or 25.4 oz) of Speedway Stout (12% ABV) contains 5.08 standard drinks. If you think these calculations of “standard drink equivalents” are confusing, the British system of “units” of alcohol is even worse. (One unit of alcohol is equal to 8 grams of alcohol, which is the amount in roughly 6.9 ounces of a 5% ABV drink.) What it all really comes down to is how many grams of pure alcohol you are ingesting on a daily or weekly basis,
Of course, alcohol isn’t served by weight. So here’s an online calculator I found that helps you figure out your “dose”. I made the chart below as a handy reference, too. Authorities in the US recommend a target for best health and longevity of no more than 196 grams of alcohol per week (28 grams per day),
Most craft beer drinkers who indulge daily or several days per week will likely find they are way over that limit. I know I have been. A four pack of pint cans of 7% beer is 104.53 grams of alcohol all on its own—more than half the weekly max. And for context, note that the British health authorities recommend about half the maximum alcohol intake the US does.
How much extract do I need for 5 gallons of beer?
The following is a basic beer recipe: 5-7 pounds of Hopped Pale Malt Extract syrup. (OG of 1.038 – 1.053) 5 gallons of water. 1-2 ounces of Hops (if desired for more hop character) 1 packet of dry Ale yeast, plus 1 packet for back-up. 3/4 cup corn sugar for Priming. This is a basic Ale beer and quite tasty.
You will be amazed. Further descriptions of the ingredients follow. Malt Extract: Using Malt Extract is what makes first time brewing simple. Malt Extract is the concentrated sugars extracted from malted barley. It is sold in both the liquid (LME) and powdered forms (DME). The syrups are approximately 20 percent water, so 4 pounds of dry Malt Extract (DME) is roughly equal to 5 pounds of Malt Extract (LME) syrup.
Malt Extract is available in both the Hopped and Unhopped varieties. Screen the ingredients to avoid corn sugar. Munton & Fison, Alexanders, Coopers, Edme and Premier are all good brands. Laaglander is another good brand but the brewer needs to be aware that it contains extra unfermentables which add to the body, making the beer finish with an FG of about 1.020.
Using Unhopped extract means adding 1-2 ounces of Hops during the boil for bittering and flavor. Hops may also be added to the Hopped Extracts towards the end of the boil for more Hop character in the final beer. Unhopped extract is preferable for brewers making their own recipes. A rule of thumb is 1 pound of malt extract (syrup) per gallon of water for a light bodied beer.
One and a half pounds per gallon produces a richer, full bodied beer. One pound of malt extract syrup typically yields a gravity of 1.034 – 38 when dissolved in one gallon of water. Dry malt will yield about 1.040 – 43. Malt extract is commonly available in Pale, Amber and Dark varieties, and can be mixed depending on the style of beer desired.
Wheat malt extract is also available and more new extracts are coming out each year. With the variety of extract now available, there is almost no beer style that cannot be brewed using extract alone. The next step in complexity for the homebrewer is to learn how to extract the sugars from the malted grain himself.
This process, called Mashing, allows the brewer to take more control of producing the wort. This type of homebrewing is referred to as All-Grain brewing. WATER: The water is very important to the resulting beer. After all, beer is mostly water. If your tap water tastes good at room temperature, it should make good beer.
- It will just need to be boiled for a few minutes to remove the chlorine and kill any bacteria.
- If the water has a metallic taste, boil and let it cool before using to let the excess minerals settle out, and pour it off to another vessel.
- Do not use water from a salt based water softener.
- A good bet for your first batch of beer is the bottled water sold in most supermarkets as Drinking Water.
Use the 2.5 gallon containers. Use one container for boiling the extract and set the other aside for addition to the fermenter later. HOPS: This is another involved subject. There are many varieties of Hops, but they are divided into two main categories: Bittering and Aroma.
Bittering Hops are high in Alpha Acids (the main bittering agent), typically around 10 percent. Aroma Hops are lower, around 5 percent. Several Hop varieties are in between and are used for both purposes. Bittering Hops are added at the start of the boil and usually boiled for an hour. Aroma Hops are added towards the end of the boil and are typically boiled for 15 minutes or less (Finishing).
Hops can also be added to the fermenter for increased hop aroma in the final beer, called Dry Hopping, but this is best done during Secondary Fermentation. A mesh bag, called a Hop Bag, may be used to help retain the hops and make removal of the Hops easier prior to fermentation.
Straining or removal of the Hops before fermentation is largely a matter of personal preference. Published beer recipes often include a Hops schedule, with amounts and boil times specified. Other recipes specify the Hops in terms of AAUs and IBUs. AAUs are a convenient unit for specifying Hops when discussing Hop additions because it allows for variation in the Alpha Acid percentages between Hop varieties.
For example, if 7 AAUs are recommended for the Boil (60 minutes) and 4 AAUs for Finishing (15 minutes). This is assuming the use of Unhopped malt extract; if using Hopped, then only add the 4 AAUs for finishing. These amounts correspond to 22 IBUs for the boil, and 1.25 IBU for the finish.
- IBUs allow for variation in brewing practices between brewers, yet provide for nearly identical final Hop bitterness levels in the beer.
- THE WORT AND OXYGEN: The use of oxygen in brewing is a double-edged sword.
- The yeast need oxygen to grow and multiply enough to provide a good fermentation.
- When the yeast has first been pitched, whether to the starter or the beer, it first seeks to reproduce.
The yeast makes use of the dissolved oxygen in the wort for this. Boiling the wort drives out the dissolved oxygen, which is why aeration of some sort is needed prior to fermentation. The yeast first use up all of the oxygen in the wort for reproduction, then get down to the business of turning sugar into alcohol and CO2 as well as processing the other flavor compounds.
- On the other hand, if oxygen is introduced while the wort is still hot, the oxygen will oxidize the wort and the yeast cannot utilize it.
- This will later cause oxidation of the beer which gives a wet cardboard taste.
- The key is temperature.
- The generally accepted temperature cutoff for preventing hot wort oxidation is 80F.
In addition, if oxygen is introduced after the fermentation has started, it will not be utilized by the yeast and will later cause the wet cardboard or sherry-like flavors. This is why it is important to cool the wort rapidly to below 80F, to prevent oxidation, and then aerate it by shaking or whatever to provide the dissolved oxygen that the yeast need.
- Cooling rapidly between 90 and 130F is important because this region is ideal for bacterial growth to establish itself in the wort.
- Most homebrewers use cold water baths around the pot or copper tubing Wort Chillers to accomplish this cooling in about 20 minutes or less.
- A rapid chill also causes the Cold Break material to settle out, which decreases the amount of protein Chill Haze in the finished beer.
Aeration of the wort can be accomplished several ways: shaking the container, pouring the wort into the fermenter so it splashes, or even hooking up an airstone to an aquarium air pump and letting that bubble for an hour. For the latter method, (which is popular) everything must be sanitized! Otherwise, Infection City.
- These instructions recommend shaking the starter and pouring/shaking the wort.
- Sanitization So far, sanitization of ingredients and equipment has been discussed but not much has been said about how to do this.
- The definition and objective of sanitization is to reduce bacteria and contaminants to insignificant or manageable levels.
Sterilization is not really possible. The Starter solution, Wort and Priming solutions will all be boiled, so those are not a problem (usually). One note – Do Not Boil the Yeast! You need them to be alive. We recommend using a no-rinse sanitizer such as Star-San, One Step, Iodiphor, or something similar.
Mix the sanitizer according to the manufacturer’s directions and apply to all equipment that will come in contact with your wort after the boil, and drain as much of the sanitizer solution from the equipment as possible. No rinsing required! Some sanitizers require letting the solution dry before using the equipment, but some can be used wet.
Refer to the manufacturers instructions for contact times and drying requirements. One very useful tool for small parts to be sanitized is a spray bottle; you can purchase a spray bottle from your local garden shop or dollar store. Fill the spray bottle with freshly made sanitizing solution and you can spray down equipment as needed during your brew day.
Most no-rinse sanitizers require only a few minutes of contact time, which can speed up your brew day! Clean all equipment as soon as possible. This means rinsing out the fermenter, tubing, etc. as soon as they are used. It is very easy to get distracted and come back to find the syrup or yeast has dried hard as a rock and the equipment is stained.
Keep a large container with a solution of P.B.W. or another food grade cleaner handy and just toss things in, clean later. Rinsing bottles after each use eliminates the need to scrub bottles. If your bottles are dirty, moldy or whatever, soaking and washing in a mild solution of chlorine bleach water for a day or two will soften most residue.
- Brushing with a bottle brush is a necessity to remove stuck residue.
- Dish washers are great for cleaning the outside of bottles and heat sterilizing, but will not clean the inside where the beer is going to go; that must be done beforehand.P.B.W.
- Also works very well but must be rinsed carefully.
- Do not wash with soap.
This leaves a residue which you will be able to taste. Never use any scented cleaning agents, these odors can be absorbed into the plastic buckets and manifest in the beer. Fresh-Lemon Scented Pinesol Beer is not very good. Also, dishwasher Rinse Agents will destroy the Head retention on your glassware.
- If you pour a beer with carbonation and no head, this is a common cause.
- YEAST: There are several aspects to yeast; it is the other major factor in determining the flavor of the beer.
- Different yeast strains will produce different beers when pitched to identical worts.
- Yeast is available both wet and dry, for Ale and Lager, et cetera.
For the first-time brewer, a dry Ale yeast is highly recommended. There are several brands available, including Coopers, Edme, Nottingham, and Red Star. All of these listed will produce good results. Ale yeast are referred to as top-fermenting because much of the fermentation action takes place at the top of the fermenter, while Lager yeasts would seem to prefer the bottom.
While many of today’s strains like to confound this generalization, there is one important difference, and that is temperature. Ale yeasts like warmer temperatures, going dormant below 55F (12C), while Lager yeasts will happily work at 40F. Using Lager yeast at Ale temperatures 65-70F (18-20C) produces Steam Beer, or what is now termed California Common Beer.
Anchor Steam Beer ™ was the founder of this unique style. For more information, see the Recommended Reading section, Yeast Starter Liquid yeast must be and all yeast should be, pitched to a Starter before pitching to the beer in the fermenter. Using a starter gives yeast a head start and prevents weak fermentations from under-pitching.
- Dry Yeast should be re-hydrated before pitching.
- Re-hydrating dry yeast is simple.1.
- Put 1 cup of warm (90F, 35C) boiled water into a sterile jar and stir in the yeast.
- Cover with Saran Wrap and wait 10 minutes.2.
- Stir in one teaspoon of sugar.3.
- Cover and place in a warm area out of direct sunlight.4.
- After 30 minutes or so, the yeast should be actively churning and foaming.
This is now ready to pitch. Liquid yeast is regarded as superior to Dry yeast because of the refinement of yeast strains present and little risk of bacterial contamination during manufacture. Liquid yeast allows for greater tailoring of the beer to a particular style.
However, the amount of yeast in a liquid packet is much less than the amount in the dry. For best results, it needs a starter. The packet must be squeezed and warmed to 80F at least two days before brewing. One day before, it should be pitched to a wort starter made from 1/4 cup of DME and a pint of water that has been boiled and cooled to 75F (25C).
Adding a quarter teaspoon of yeast nutrient is also advisable. Let this sit in the same warm place until brewing time the next day. Some foaming or an increase in the white yeast layer on the bottom should be evident. The Starter process may be repeated to provide even more yeast to the wort to insure a strong fermentation.
Do IPAs use more hops?
The Basics of What an IPA Beer Tastes Like – Every kind of IPA beer has a different flavor. Some have a strong citrus taste, while others are intense and bitter. For example, New England Style IPAs, West Coast IPAs, and English IPAs tend to have more of a fruity flavor.
They also have a less bitter taste than other kinds of IPAs. Somebody who drinks a New England IPA alongside English Coast IPA might notice that the English versions of the beverage are maltier and more bitter. In general, brewers who create IPAs add more hops during the brewing process than they do to other kinds of beers such as lagers and ambers.
They do this to add extra flavor and to create more complex aromas. Brewers will add bittering hops during the early stages of the brewing process so that they can get as much bitterness from them as they possibly can. At later stages of the process, they’ll also add aroma and flavor hops which will create more subtle flavors.
How many hops is normal?
Why HOP Count is Important – The reason HOP counts are important is that it only takes, approximately, 40 HOPs for any piece of data to reach the entire world. Yet the default setting for most devices is far higher than 40 HOPs. LINUX has a default HOP count of 64.
- And Microsoft, since the NT4 Service Pack 6 in 1995, has boosted its default HOP count from 32 to 128.
- The reason for these high default HOP counts is user convenience; you don’t want to have to send an email to your colleague in London only to find your email has hit its HOP count limit and isn’t delivered.
The trouble is not all data is created equal. The email you sent to your colleague in London is far different from the customer credit card numbers stored in your data center. This becomes an even-bigger problem when a hacker or phish gets beyond your firewall — such as when one of your employees mistakenly clicked on a bad link in an email — and that intruder has exfiltrated your data to Bulgaria.
Since it only takes 40 HOPs (or routers) to reach Sofia, the capital of Eastern Europe’s poorest country, and your organization happens to be using Microsoft (with a default hop count of 128), there’s little you can do, once a hacker has breached your sphere of trust, to keep that data from being exfiltrated.
No matter how powerful a firewall you may have.
How do you measure hop in beer?
What are Alpha Acids, AAU’s, HBU’s, and IBU’s? Alpha acid resins only contribute to the bitterness of the beer. Occurring naturally in the lupulin gland on the hop cone they are not very soluble in water. The reason that must be boiled is because the heat of boiling water creates a condition that allows a chemical reaction, called isomerization, to occur which makes the alpha acid resins soluble in water.
- AAU stands for Alpha Acid Units, and is a measurement of potential bitterness in hops.
- The percentage of alpha acid in a given sample of hops multiplied by the weight in ounces of that sample.
- One ounce of hops with an alpha acid content of 1 percent contains 1 AAU, or,01 ounce of alpha acid.
- HBU stands for Homebrew Bitterness Units and is another method by which home brewers can determine how much hops to use.
Homebrew Bitterness Units equals the percent alpha acid of hops multiplied by the quantity in ounces of hops used. If, for example, a recipe of a given volume of beer calls for 2 ounces of 5 percent alpha acid Cascade hops, it is equal to 10 HBU’s. If your Cascade hops are only 4 percent alpha acid you will know to use: 10 HBU ¸ 4% = 2.5 oz of hops.
Or, if you wish to use another variety of hops, say Centennial hops at 10 percent alpha acid, you know to use: 10 HBU ¸ 10% = 1 oz of Centennial hops. IBU stands for International Bitterness Units, One Bitterness Unit is equal to 1 milligram of isomerized alpha acid in 1 liter of wort or beer or 1 part per million isomerized alpha acid.
This is a system of measuring bitterness devised by brewing scientists and is an accepted standard throughout the world. Home brewers usually do not have the sophisticated equipment to measure actual BU’s and often use the system of HBU’s to closely approximate the desired bitterness in their beer.
The simplest formula for attempting to predict IBU is to use a sliding scale (depending on boil time) as a best-guess for utilization, and use a constant to convert AAU into parts per million. A fairly accurate ballpark figure to use for your homebrewing hop utilization value based on a one-hour boil would be 23-25%,,23-.25 respectively.
This translates into: IBU = (AAU x 74.4) ¸ (wort Volume in gallons x Utilization percentage). IBU = (AAU x 74.4) ¸ (V x U). IBU = (5 x 74.4) ¸ (5 x,25) = 18.6 IBU. : What are Alpha Acids, AAU’s, HBU’s, and IBU’s?
How much hops to add to lager?
As the tin is pre hopped, adding extra is a top up. I think 25g of mosaic is a bit big for a short boil. I’d do about 10-15g for about 10-15m. Drop them in 500g malt and 5 litres of water when the malt is on the boil.
How much is too much hops?
A pound per gallon is too much. I’ve tried it with both whole cones and pellets. I routinely use a pound of hops in a 3 gallon batch of IPA. So the answer to your question is somewhere between 5 and 16 oz/gallon.
Can you take too much hops?
Hops extracts and hops bitter acids are possibly safe when used short-term. Hops extracts have been used safely in doses of up to 300 mg daily for up to 3 months. Hops bitter acids have been used safely in doses of 35 mg daily for 3 months. Hops might cause dizziness and sleepiness in some people.
What is the ratio of hops?
Hops are the ingredient in beer that provides its backbone of bitterness, increases its microbiological stability, helps stabilize its foam, and greatly influences its taste and aroma. For if your ale may endure a fortnight, your Beere through the benefit of the Hoppe, shall continue a moneth, and what grace it yieldeth to the teaste, all men may judge that have sense in their mouths Reginald Scot, The Perfite Platform for a Hoppe Garden, 1576.
Hops are the flowers or “cones” of Humulus lupulus, a Latin diminutive meaning roughly “a low little wolf,” so-named for the plant’s tactile qualities, prodigious growth, and wide range. The Humulus genus belongs to the family of Cannabinaceae, which includes Cannabis (hemp, marijuana) and Celtis (Hackberry).
Hops are native to the Northern Hemisphere in the temperate zones of Europe, western Asia, and North America and are thought to have originated in China. They are now grown commercially in both hemispheres between roughly 30 and 52 degrees latitude. They are hardy plants that can survive cold winters with temperatures as low as –30°C (roughly –20°F).
There are five recognized taxonomic varieties in the genus Humulus: lupulus are European hops; cordifolius are Japanese hops; and lupuloides, neomexicanus, and pubescens are North American natives. “Noble” hops is a historical and commercial term, which is somewhat arbitrarily assigned to four distinct hop landraces, that is, plants that were domesticated in their respective areas and have become open-pollinated, genetically isolated populations there.
These are Hallertauer Mittelfrueh from the Hallertau region of Bavaria; Tettnanger from Tettnang in Germany near Lake Constance; Spalt from Bavaria in Germany, south of Nuremburg; and Saaz from the Žatec region of the Czech Republic. See hallertau hop region, noble hops, spalt hop region, tettnang hop region, and žatec hop region,
Many hop varieties released in the past century can trace their lineage to at least one of these nobles. Although these four noble hops have been revered for their pleasing aroma profile and gentle bitterness, with alpha acid to beta acid ratios of 1:1, they are notoriously low yielding and highly disease prone.
In the trade, hops come in two basic market classes, bittering and aroma hops, with relatively few hops also being marketed as dual-purpose varieties. Bittering, or kettle, hops are added to the wort near the beginning of the boil; and aroma, or finishing, hops, are added any time from 30 minutes before the end of the boil to just at shut-down.
They can also be added to the whirlpool, or even later. See boiling and whirlpool, The addition of hops to fermented beer is called dry hopping. See dry hopping, This practice adds highly volatile hop essential oils to the beer—oils that in bittering hops evaporate into the brew stack during the kettle boil and may even be scrubbed out of wort during fermentation.
The intensity of hoppiness in beer is a matter of beer style specifications and the personality of the brewer. See beer style and bitterness, Some mass-market American lagers, for instance, refreshing as they may be to many consumers, can leave the drinker feeling as if the brewer had just waved a single hop cone over the kettle.
- At the same time, some craft-brewed beers clearly push the envelope of hoppiness to the edge of human bitterness tolerance, with the brewers apparently reveling in an almost punishing hop character.
- Such beers are specialty beers of growing popularity, especially in New World brewpubs, and are slowly catching on in other beer cultures around the world as well, but they are surely not for everyone.
See extreme brewing, Harvest day on a farm that grows organic hops, Ashland, Oregon. george rubaloff Ever since the discovery of hops as a suitable beer flavoring, which occurred probably in the 8th century ad, hops have been added to wort as kiln-dried whole cones. Hops need to lose their moisture as quickly as possible after they are harvested, because otherwise they start to rot within just a few hours.
Traditionally, hop kilns were housed in oast houses, which by the 19th century had taken on a distinctive circular architecture, with conical roofs that still dot the countryside of many current and former hop-producing regions to this day. See oast house, Hops are perennial herbaceous plants that live 10 to 20 years, maintaining a perennial root, called a rhizome, a carbohydrate storage structure that is also found in ginger and the iris plant.
Each spring the rhizome sprouts a mass of bines that wrap clockwise around anything they contact. Hops grow vigorously up to 15 m (about 50 ft) tall. In most hop gardens, however, they may reach a height of 4 to 9 m (some 15 to 30 ft). During the peak of the growing season in mid-summer, hops bines may add as much as 50 cm (about 20 inches) per week.
- The bines are herbaceous, although they tend to form woody, secondary growth on the older tissue late in the season.
- They die to the ground in winter.
- Unlike vines, which have tendrils, a bine adheres to its support with its large number of rigid, hooked stem hairs called trichomes.
- These hold the bine to a substrate.
Unfortunately for many hop workers, the oils secreted by trichomes can also irritate the skin. Botanical illustration of Humulus Iupulus, teh scientific name for the common hop. German, c.1850. PIKE MICROBREWERY MUSEUM, SEATTLE, WA. Hops are dioecious (Greek for “two houses”), meaning there are separate male and female plants. Only seedless female hop cones are used in the brewing industry, which is why growers take care to control male plant pollinators in regions where hops are indigenous or cultivated.
- Male hop plants are less desirable, because they have very small cones that contain only 1/150th of the amount of resin that female cones contain.
- They also lack some of the essential aroma oils so prized by brewers and beer drinkers.
- Male plants are tolerated in hop yards only when an open-pollination breeding project is underway.
Occasionally a hop plant may turn out to be monoecious, with both male and female flowers on the same plant. But such plants produce only infertile seeds. Modern breeding efforts have produced triploid hop varieties, such as the popular Willamette. See willamette (hop),
Such hops are naturally seedless and thus infertile, which, however, is not a problem because most commercial hop varieties nowadays are clonally propagated by cuttings of their rhizomes or some softwood stem tissue; these easily form roots if just kept moist for a few weeks. See hop breeding and selection,
The hop flower, or cone, is botanically a “catkin.” It is an inflorescence that contains a central support called a strig. The strig holds 20 to 60 bracteoles (petals/sepals) along its axis, each with two female floral parts at its base to form a cone-shape flower.
The size of the flower varies among hop varieties from an average 2 to 3.5 cm (approximately 0.8 to 1.5 inches) to very large ones of more than 5 cm (2 inches), with shapes varying from round to oblong and somewhat boxy. Lupulin glands, also at the base of the bracteoles, produce the yellow to golden substance called lupulin.
It is in the lupulin that the resins—including alpha and beta acids—as well as essential oils are concentrated once the hop cone has ripened. Alpha acids, also called humulones, which are the sources of most of the bitterness in beer, make up about 3% to 4% of the cone’s weight in aroma varieties.
In superalpha bittering varieties—which are the most recent products of many breeding programs around the world—they may make up more than 20%. During the wort boil, alpha acids are converted to water-soluble iso-alpha acids or isohumulones, the true bitter compounds in beer. This conversion, or isomerization, is traditionally one of the main objectives of wort boiling and the boiling time must usually be long enough (at least 45 minutes for most hop varieties) to allow isomerization to take place.
That said, isomerization can take place in the absence of boiling, so long as the temperature is high enough; mechanical action, surface area of the hop material, and the contact time are critical factors as well. The unit of measurement for hop bittering potential is the International Bitterness Unit (IBU).
- See international bitterness units (ibus),
- Alpha acids are divided into three analogues—compounds of very similar molecular structures: the desirable humulone and adhumulone and the undesirable cohumulone.
- Cohumulone may make up anywhere between roughly from 15% to 50% of a hop’s total alpha acid content, depending on variety.
It can also vary greatly from one growing year to the next in the same variety. High cohumulone levels in hops tend to result in lower foam stability and a harsher, often unpleasant bitterness. They are also usually associated with poor aroma profiles. Postcard, c.1920, showing workers standing bext to a large sack of hops on a farm in Kent, England. A hop press mechanically packed the hops into these sacks, known as “pockets.” PIKE MICROBREWERY MUSEUM, SEATTLE, WA. As the alpha acids were discovered to actually be three related molecules, the same discovery was made for beta acids, which also come in three analogs: lupulone, colupulone, and adlupulone.
- The character of a hop, in terms of its bittering and aroma potential, is largely determined by its ratio of alpha to beta acids.
- The most sought-after aroma varieties tend to have a ratio close to 1:1.
- Most cultivated hop varieties, however, have a ratio closer to 2:1.
- Hops with much higher alpha-to-beta ratio are, of course, the modern superalpha varieties.
Prior to the 1950s, alpha and beta acids were also called soft resins by virtue of their solubility in hexane, a solvent. Techniques were not developed to separate alpha acids into the three analogues until much later. In early accounts, therefore, all alpha acids were simply referred to as “humulone” and all beta acids as “lupulone.” Lupulone provides potent antimicrobial properties and is active against Gram-negative bacteria such as Staphylococcus and Clostridium.
- Essential oils in hops are responsible for the distinct hop aroma.
- Some fresh hops smell very citrusy, such as Cascade, which has a grapefruit–piney bouquet, whereas others, such as Strisselspalt, have a more floral bouquet.
- The main essential oils in hops are humulene, which has a woody, balsamic aroma; carophyllene, which has a black-pepper, spicy aroma; myrcene, which has a geranium-like, floral aroma; and farnesene, which has a gardenia-like floral aroma.
Of these, farnesene is often either completely absent or represented in only miniscule quantities. Other essential oils, such as linalool with its citrus-like bergamot aroma, although present in only tiny amounts, may have a disproportionately high impact on the overall aroma of certain hop varieties.
Aroma descriptor | Essential oil/odorant | |
---|---|---|
Fruity | Citrus, bergamot Citrus, balsamic Citrus Citrus, soapy Pineapple Pineapple Pineapple Apple-like Raspberry Black currant Fruity Fruity | Linalool Limonene Octanal Nonanal Ethyl 2-methylpropanoate (3E,5Z)-Undeca-1,3,5-triene (3E,5Z,9E)-Undeca-1,3,5,9-tetraene (+ /–)-Ethyl 2-methylbutanoate 4-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)-2-butanone 4-Methyl-4-sulfanylpentan-2-one Methyl 2-methylbutanoate Ethyl 2-methylbutanoate |
Floral | Gardenia Geranium leaf Geranium leaf Rose Minty | Farnesene Myrcene (5Z)-Octa-1,5-dien-3-one Geraniol 2-Phenylethyl 3-methylbutanoate |
Spicy | Black pepper Aniseed, sweet Soup seasoning | Carophyllene Anethole 3-Hydroxy-4,5-dimethyl-2(5H)-furanone(sotolone) |
Vegetative | Grassy Muscat-like, green Bell pepper Cucumber Cooked potato | (3Z)-Hex-3-enal (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol 2-Isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (2E,6Z)-Nona-2,6-dienal 3-(Methylsulfanyl)-propanal |
Nutty | Almond, roasted | 3-Methyl-2-butene-1-thiol |
Caramelized | Honey Honey Sweet, honey Sweet | Phenylacetaldehyde Phenylacetic acid trans-Cinnamaldehyde 3-Hydroxy-2-methyl-4-pyrone |
Woody | Balsamic Vanilla | α-Humulene Vanillin Vanilla |
Earthy | Mushroom Mushroom, balsamic | Oct-1-en-3-one Germacrene |
Chemical | Cabbage Catty, thiol-like Rancid, cheesy Rancid, sweaty | Dimethyltrisulfane 3-Mercaptohexan-1-ol Butanoic acid (Z)-3-Hexenoic acid |
Microbiological | Cheesy Cheesy Fatty | 3-Methylbutanoic acid Pentanoic acid (2E,4E)-Nona-2,4-dienal |
Source: Various studies conducted at Weihenstephan in Germany and the Kyoto University in Japan. See weihenstephan, Until well into the high Middle Ages, before hops had become the beer flavoring of choice just about everywhere, brewers used a large variety of herbs, known as gruit in medieval Europe, as well as strange items such as oxen gall, soot, bark, and mushrooms to spice their beers and sometimes to cover up off-flavors.
- See gruit,
- The presence of hops can be document virtually everywhere where humans had migrated, but it took thousands of years for hops to make the leap from the wild into the brew kettle.
- The first written description of a hop garden comes from Hallertau.
- It dates from 768 ad,
- See hallertau,
- The first recorded use of hops in brewing dates from 822 ad when Abbot Adalhard of the Benedictine Monastery of Corbie in the Picardy, in northeastern France, made a record stating that his monks added hops to their ales.
By the 11th century hopped beer was commonplace in France, and in 1268, King Louis IX issued a decree stipulating that, in his realm, only malt and hops may be used for beer making. Britain, by contrast, seems to have resisted the joys of the hop for a few more centuries, although some early hops must have made it across the Channel, as is evidenced by the remains of a boat holding a cargo of hops and found abandoned in Gravaney, Kent.
Carbon-dating of the timbers placed that boat into the 870s ad, For the most part, however, the English considered the hop plant an “unwholesome weed that promoted melancholy.” Kings Henry VI and Henry VIII both banned the use of hops in English ales altogether during their reigns. The latter, in the 1530s, justified his antihop stance by declaring the hop an aphrodisiac that would drive his subjects to sinful behavior.
Meanwhile, brewers on the Continent moved in exactly the opposite direction, perfecting the use of hops in their kettles. In many places, local authorities even made brewers take an oath that they would flavor their brews with nothing but hops. By the 14th century, a flourishing hop market had developed in Nuremberg, Bavaria, where the hop became known as “green gold,” a precious commodity and a source of great wealth for growers and traders alike.
- By 1516, the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV put forth the seminal Bavarian Beer Purity Law, which stipulated that brewers in the Duke’s realm may use only three ingredients in beer-making, barley, water, and hops.
- See reinheitsgebot,
- As hops won out over gruit in most parts of the Continent, it became more and more difficult to keep it out of English ales.
In fact, a 1604 English statute laments that “of late great fraudes and deceits are generally practised and used by foreiners merchants strangers and others in foreine parts beyond the seas, in the false packing of foreine hoppes and sold with leaves, stalkes, powder, sand, strawe, and with loggets of wood, drosse, and other soyle for the increase of the waight thereof, to the inriching of themselves by deceit.” These “great fraudes and deceits” apparently caused England an annual revenue loss amounting to the then-stately sum of 20,000 pounds.
- In North America, the early settlers found wild hops, which are native to the New World, but they preferred to brew with cultivated varieties that they had known back home, in the Old World, which they either imported or grew themselves from imported rhizomes.
- See american hops, history,
- Eventually, as American hop breeding programs were established in the late 1800s, European cultivars hybridized to indigenous native American hop plants started to make their appearance.
One such variety is Cluster, a hop believed to be a hybrid between English Cluster and a native American male hop plant. See cluster (hop), Hop cultivation takes advantage of the plants’ tendency to wind around any support and to produce a large amount of vegetation in a growing season.
- Early hop yards in upstate New York, in the 1800s, were circular groups of plants growing up on supports that may have been made of hemp twine toward a central pole.
- Modern hop yards, by contrast, are laid out in a pole-and-cable grid pattern.
- The poles are placed in the ground at the grid intersections, with the cable connecting the pole tops in all directions.
At the beginning of every growing season, V-shape bine supports are strung from the ground to the upper supports, which allow the hop plants to climb skyward. Judicious pruning to just a few bines per plant and careful training of the shoots around the twine help to maximize yields and keep insects and pathogens in check.
Hops are susceptible to many pests, such as downy mildew (Pseudoperonospora humuli) and powdery mildew (Podosphaera macularis formerly called Sphaerotheca humuli). It is now known that resistance to powdery mildew is genetically determined, which allows breeders to select for the chromosomes with that trait.
Aphids and spider mites, too, are a perennial problem in hop yards. These are usually controlled with judicious pesticide applications, good agronomic practices, and biocontrol through predatory insects. Finally, there are viruses, such as hop mosaic virus, that can cause severe crop loss and stunting in some varieties.
This virus is spread by aphids and is nearly impossible to eradicate. Australia and New Zealand, because of their physical isolation from other landmasses, have entirely avoided many hop pests and diseases and are therefore havens of organic hop production. The future of hops in beer seems to be assured, but in a bifurcated trajectory.
Whereas the consumption of beer—especially of relatively low-hopped beer with IBU values just above the taste threshold—is rising spectacularly in many markets in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, beer consumption in traditional markets has been—and is expected to continue to be—stagnant or declining.
In many of these mature markets, however, however, consumer preferences for aggressively bittered brews—some with IBU values at the solubility threshold of alpha acids in wort—and for beers with elaborate and complex aromas are on the rise. For hop breeder, growers, and traders these two seemingly conflicting trends mean that the market push for ever higher superalpha varieties, as well as the market push for ever more interesting aroma varieties, is likely to continue.
The superalpha hops will satisfy the brewing industry’s demand for generic bittering cultivated under the most economical conditions for a growth market in minimally hopped mass-market beers. The diversification of disease-resistant but much lower-yielding aroma varieties, by contrast, will cater to the high-value market for sophisticated specialty beers.
- As the flavor and aroma of hops continue to bedazzle craft brewers worldwide, we may now be seeing, after more than 1,200 years of brewing with hops, the “hoppiest” beers the world has ever seen.
- Bibliography Hop Growers Convention.
- Proceedings of the Scientific Commission.2005,
- Http://www.lfltest.bayern.de/ipz/hopfen/10585/sc05-proceedings-internet.pdf/ (accessed November 1, 2010).
Irwin, A.J., C.R. Murray, and T.D. Thompson, An investigation of the relationships between hopping rate, time of boil, and individual alpha-acid utilization. American Society of Brewing Chemists 43 (1985): 145–52. Kishimoto, T. Hop-derived odorants contributing to the aroma characteristics of beer,
Ph.D. Dissertation. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, 2008. Rebecca, Kneen, Small scale and organic hop production, http://www.crannogales.com/HopsManual.pdf/ (accessed June 1, 2008). Nickerson, G.B., P.A. Williams, and A. Haunold, Varietal differences in the proportions of cohumulone, adhumulone, and humulone in hops,
Journal of the Institute of Brewing 44 (1986): 91–4. Peacock, V.A., M.L. Deinzer, S.T. Likens, G.B. Nickerson, and L.A. McGill, Floral hop aroma in beer, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 29 (1981): 1265–69. Steinhaus, M., W. Wilhelm, and P. Schieberle,
Comparison of the most odour-active volatiles in different hop varieties by application of a comparative aroma extract dilution analysis, European Food Research and Technology 226 (2007): 45–55. Tomlan, M.A. Tinged with gold. Hop culture in the United States, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
Verzele, M., and D. De Keukeleire, Chemistry and analysis of hop and beer bitter acids, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishing Co, 1991.
How much dry hops to add?
How much? – This brings us to the question of quantity. A “normal” measurement for dry hopping is between 1–2 oz. (28–56 g) of hops for a five-gallon (19-L) batch. But the real answer to the question of how much is simply, “as much as you want.” If you want just a hint of hop aroma you might go as low as a 1/2 oz.
14 g). If you want a beer that will knock you over with a pungent hop flavor and aroma, you might decide to go nuts and throw in 4 oz. (112 grams). I’ve heard of brewers using even more than this, but even a serious hophead like myself will tell you that more than four ounces of dry hops may be pushing it.
You should also take into account the variety of hop. If you’re using a hop with a high essential oil content, you probably don’t want to use as much as you might if you were using something less oily. My advice for your first experiments with dry hopping would be to pick a traditional aroma hop and use no more than 1 ounce (28 g).
What is the ratio of fresh hops to pellets?
How to Brew With Fresh Hops FREE SHIPPING ON MOST ORDERS OVER $55, September 12th, 2016 // By // // One of the best times of year for us brewers is at the beginning of fall, when the hops we grew all summer are full on the bine and ready for harvest and use! We have many customers who grow their own hops, from at the beginning of each year.
- It usually takes two years to get a usable quantity of hops from rhizomes, but once they start coming in, a little knowledge can go a long way.
- Our own resident hop master, Brady Smith, has come up with a few tips on harvesting and using fresh hops that are helpful for every homebrewer wanting to brew with fresh hops.
In addition to having a certifiably green thumb, Brady has been growing, harvesting and using fresh hops for close to 15 years. In fact, he is the author of the Great Fermentations, Below are some of his notes on brewing with fresh hops:
Knowing when to harvest your hops is equal parts art and science. Most hop varieties are forgiving and have a 5-6 day window of peak maturity. Cones should feel fairly dry and papery when pinched. Often, the bracts on each cone will flare out and/or begin to turn a pale brown color. You may also notice yellow lupulin covering the bracts– a sure sign that it’s time to harvest.
When picking by hand, try to limit the amount of stem and foliage that gets collected.
Fresh-picked hops are likely to be teeming with small bugs. Place the hops on a screen or sheet for 30 minutes, give them a few good shakes, and this will encourage bugs to crawl away.
Fresh hops should be used within 48 hours of picking. Store them in a sealed plastic bucket in the refrigerator. DO NOT FREEZE fresh/undried hops.
Depending upon the hops variety and growing season, fresh hops will tip the scales at four to six times the weight of dry hops. A wet:dry ratio of 5:1 is a conservative value to use when designing a recipe, meaning 5oz of fresh Cascade hops will yield approximately the same IBU’s as 1oz dried Cascade cones/pellets.
Fresh hops may be used at any point during your brew day, even in the mash. Mash-hopping, a traditional English technique, produces great hops flavor and the IBU equivalent of a 15-20 minute kettle addition. Mash-hopping also limits wort absorption (and some mess) in the kettle.
A conservative rule-of-thumb is to use pellet or dried hops in the kettle for 75% of the desired IBU’s and fresh hops in the mash or as a late kettle addition for the remaining bitterness, flavor and aroma.
Whether fresh or dried, whole cone hops yield best when they’re allowed to swim freely in the kettle. After the boil, use a steel strainer to remove the cones, but press out the absorbed wort into the kettle with a large sanitized spoon or mash paddle.
Fresh hops will produce slightly different results from year to year, but if your brew day procedure is sound, the worst case scenario is fresh, vibrant beer!
There you have it, straight from our master gardener! Have fun with your fresh hops, and may all your fermentations be Great Fermentations! Pre-Order Hop Rhizomes : How to Brew With Fresh Hops
How much hops to add to lager?
As the tin is pre hopped, adding extra is a top up. I think 25g of mosaic is a bit big for a short boil. I’d do about 10-15g for about 10-15m. Drop them in 500g malt and 5 litres of water when the malt is on the boil.