For those of you who vacuum seal your hops and keep them in the freezer like I do, what’s the longest that you will still use your hops after being stored?
Are you using them for alpha/bittering, or for flavor & aroma? If it is for flavor and aroma I have no idea. I just asked that question today on this forum. If is for bittering, it is really variety dependent. But here is a good reference page: http://www.morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.1/garetz.html
With aged hops, there are typically hop degradation calculators on brewing software that one can utilize to adjust the alpha acids based on age. As for flavor/aroma, if vaccuum sealed and kept cold in the freezer, I think they can easily stay fresh for years (4-5).
During the 2008 hop shortage I way over bought pellet hops in a panic thinking I would not have enough.
They were all noble hops or their offspring with similar characteristics.
I have stored these in a freezer at zero degrees since they arrived.
I continue to use these for bittering additions with only slightly decreased bittering noted.
Have not noted any off flavor issues.
Add me to the list saying they last a long time. In addition, any time I used a degradation calculator I ended up overbittered… I bet 10 years might even be fine if stored well.
I agree! When sealed in metallized mylar bags and kept at freezing temps, hops do seem to last a long time. I have hops kept this way that are 4 or 5 years old and they seem to still to produce desirable bittering, flavor, and aroma character in my beers.
Martin, are you using metallized vacuum seal or zip-lock?
My hops aren’t in metallized bags - I use Food Saver bags that go with my vacuum sealer. Long term storage works really well in them.
I don’t have a vacuum resealer, but I do have a heat resealer. I buy my mainstay hops in 1 lb packs that typically come as vacuum sealed metallized mylar bags. I clip off enough of the bag to get some hops out and reseal with the heat bar. Not perfect, but seems to be adequate.
I’ve had hops from 2014 in Food Saver with success, metallized vacuum seal would be even better.
I had some amarillo in the freezer that was still good after nearly six years.
I used to use my FoodSaver religiously when I was a whole hops plus false bottom brewer, but I started to use Talenti ice cream containers after switching to using pellets. A Telenti pint-size ice cream container holds about 8ozs of pellets. These containers are clearly made from one of the new O2 barrier PET resins.
I will sometimes use pint mason jars with the foodsaver jar attachment. My issue with jars is they take up the same amount of space when a quarter full as they do completely full.
I do keep a quart jar to collect my remnant hops. I brew an IPA when it is full.
I do have a bunch of the Telenti pints that I use to store hardware and other small bits. They are great jars as they don’t have a shoulder, they are very ridged, and they are clear.
I am assuming those can’t be flushed or purged of O2 though?
Bah, you’re only storing hops, not mashing a helles 
I could flush the containers with CO2 if I cared enough to do so, but we are dealing with pellets that are stored at -18C (I could also displace the air with something solid). Temperature plays a major role in oxidation. I used whole cones almost exclusively from 1993 until the fall of 2015. I purchased my whole cones after the harvest and kept them in cold storage until they were used. I have used three season old whole Cluster cones that were handled this way without any appreciable loss of bitterness or off-flavors.
Heat, light and oxygen are the three evils on hops. To avoid these three I have used the following technique for years.
I take a 16 ounce disposible PET water bottle, flush with CO2, pour one pound of pellet hops in, cap with a ball lock carbonation cap, then pressurized to 15psi with CO2. Toss them into the freezer. Take them out and pour what I need, flush and repressurize with CO2.
I will have several bottle in the freezer at any time ready to use. Some varieties of hops that I use infrequently may sit for a year or more in these bottles. The rest of the hops remain in their mylar sealed bags till ready to use. All these hops remain in good condition with this technique.
Neat idea.
I only use pellets. Kept in vacuum sealed bags in freezer. I basically dont even worry. Use till gone. Having said that, if I were trying to win a million dollars, I would probably try to use the very freshest samples from the best plants. And then I probably wouldn’t place anyway.
I’ve found that a dash of confirmation bias makes up for using old hops. Just tell your buddy that this beer has hand picked hops you had flown in from Germany. Its very expensive, and you can only share one pint. Oh, ok, two…
That’s pretty funny, and spot on. Confirmation bias probably has a bigger influence than we’d wanna admit sometimes.