I want to extract the oil from hops and use the oil for some foods. I’m sure whatever method of extraction I find I’ll have to experiment with it to get it just the way I want but I was looking for a place to start. The only methods I saw for extracting oils from flowers and vegetables was by soaking it in alcohol for a few days and filtering…etc. Are there any other methods? I was worried that soaking in alcohol might take away from the flavor and aroma. I know distillers use freeze distillation for their brewing. If I was to boil the hops and then follow the concepts of freeze distillation, would this work? Any help would be appreciated.
You could try something like this: ESSENTIAL OIL Steam Distillation Steam Distiller . I think you would have to use a lot of plant material to extract enough essential oil to be able to do something worthwhile with it. Give it a go.
I wouldn’t do the boil/freeze distillation thing, either soak in ethanol or use an essential oil extractor. Those will be your best bet, unless you have access to supercritical CO2, that would make some nice extract too.
It seems that alcohol extractions work well for getting useful properties out of plants for health reasons, but for flavors I think it would ruin them. It depends on what you are making. I know the THC in marijuana, which is very closely related to hops, needs to bond to a fat or an alcohol. I am curious if you could use olive oil instead of alcohol. You could use this as a base in a lot of recipes. My old roommate worked as a chef making desserts. She tried to make a beer dessert, with chocolate cover barley and candied hops.
I had the hard hop candies at the NHC. The flavor was pretty good, but it stuck with you for a LONG time. I burped hop candy for a long time after, it stopped being fun after 15 minutes or so, got annoying after an hour.
Ever since I heard about that Sierra Nevada Hop Hunter, it got me all interested in hop oil all over again.
It seems like the major hop suppliers all have it listed somewhere, yet it’s nowhere to be found.
Then I stumbled upon this on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/121558322738
A good selection of different hops, too. Anyone tried them yet?
I’ve never heard of them, and something about their post has my spidey senses tingling. They don’t actually mention their source or how the oil is extracted. The product also seems marketed more to the consumer than the brewer. I’ve had bad luck with other products meant to doctor up a beer.
I messaged the seller asking for a bit more detail about the product. If it seems legit, I may spring for a few. Citra flavored water/tea/kombucha sounds pretty tasty to me, and it would be a nice way to taste-test various dry hopping regimens on a beer.
+1. I think that that most or all the hop shot/oil type products available to homebrewers are for bittering, and don’t have good aromatic properties. I hope eventually what SN is doing with that beer will filter down to the home level.
EDIT - Eric, I’ll be curious to hear what you think, if you use some of this. I thought it looked kind of spotty, too. Maybe not. I’d be curious if there’s any useful flavor or aroma, or just bittering power.
Thanks Eric for prodding! Please do let us know what the seller says!
According to the ebay page and their website, I am under the impression that it is the essential oil. They also sell a separate iso-alpha acid on their website, which further makes me think these should be essential oils.
I don’t know, for $5 it’s cheap enough to try I guess. (I tried the Hop Tech Hop Oil before and was really not impressed.) Maybe I will buy a few, too. Will let you guys know!
If it’s anything like this: http://freshops.com/cgi-bin/shopper.cgi?preadd=action&key=MERCHOIL, it should be a hit. Great for those events you get stuck at where your host ends up providing a keg of BMC or other lifeless beer. A drop or two will help you get through the event a little better.
They got right back to me. It does sound just like the freshops product:
[quote]Thanks for you interests!
Our hop oil is pure steam distilled from whole hops and no solvent was used. It is different from hop extract that it does not contain other hop compounds.
It is designed to be used in finished beer, pre-diluted in alcohol to be dosed at 5ppm per 12oz with one single drop.
We have more information on our website http://www.HopMyBeer.com , and since we don’ have to pay extra auction fees, we do have better pricing there.
Let us know if you have more questions!
Cheers!
Jarvi
[/quote]
The price is $5 apiece on their website, with free shipping over $25. I ended up snapping up the iso-AA product as well as Centennial, Chinook, Apollo and Citra oils. I’m looking forward to trying them out.
FWIK, you are supposed to use hop oils toward the very end of the process (utilization rates at the earlier stages are very very poor), so dosing it in finished beer, or as their website suggested to add it directly into the beer before you drink, may be what I’d do anyway.
It does seem like they are framing it to be easy to use for consumers instead of homebrewers, but I suppose it’s not that different in this case.
