My mom grew some hops for me… and she brought me a shoebox of them last weekend.
I wasn’t brewing, so I put them in a freezer bag, sucked the air out with a straw, and put them in the freezer.
Can I still use these hops? Do hops suffer from freezer burn???
I hope you give your mom something nice for Mother’s Day, sounds like she rocks.
A week in the freezer is no problem. Hops can get freezer burn, but not in that amount of time. If stored properly, hops will stay fresh for years in the freezer. I store mine in glass, but a freezer bag should be OK for a short time.
So why dry them???
So you can store them longer.
How long have the un-dried hops kept in your glass jars?
I am moving soon and don’t want to waste my hop yield.
The guys from Gorst Valley hops said that freezer bags are good for a month, as they are not O2 barrier bags.
Foodsaver type bags are O2 barrier, and hops will last 2+ years in the freezer from my experience.
I don’t store wet hops that way; I was talking about dry hops.
Glass is an oxygen barrier, too. Remove oxygen, keep very cold (mine are probably -10F), and they’ll last a long time. Many years. I don’t know the absolute limit; I’ve never had to throw aways hops stored this way.
Wet hops take up more space and would likely to be harder to separate and use unless you IQF’d them (which it doesn’t sound like you did). As far as how long they last in a big block of ice, I’d probably have to check McGee’s On Food and Cooking to see about what changes and when during freezing.
Your original question was whether a week in the freezer would be a problem for hops stored in a freezer bag; I agree that they should be used within a month to be at their best.