Pellet vs. Leaf Hops

You probably use a higher hop rate per gallon that I do.  Most of my beers have BU:GU of 0.50 to 0.70, and I usually only make one late addition with no post-fermentation hops.

I make mostly "non-hop forward "German and Belgian ales, low hopping rates. I do make some American IPAs as well.

Yes, but they were whole cones for a year; therefore, the whole cone = rapid deterioration in quality argument flies out the door.

I dunno. I have had whole cone hops sealed and stored in sub freezing temps that were fine. But once you open them they have to be carefully purged and resealed or they go bad much quicker than pellets.

As far as pelletizing the previous year whole cones, I still see no evidence what you say is true. I have an $11,000 hop contract and they are all from 2014 harvest. I found a few hops from the 2013 harvest, but not many. And I wasn’t impressed by the price so I didn’t get them. I would think that it there were so many whole cones on the market that needed to be pelletized that there would be a much better variety. But there simply is not.

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I have heard about this practice from more than one person, one of which used to work for a major hop broker.  The reason why the end of last year’s whole cone crop is pelletized is to increase shelf life and reduce storage space.

While commercial contracts may state year of harvest, few hop brokers specify the year of harvest on their home brew trade products; hence, there is no way to determine if the hops were harvested last fall or three years ago.  I also believe that the home brew trade is still getting hops that are either culled by commercial brewers or surplus to their needs.  The best hops still go to the brewers with the deepest pockets and strictest requirements.  The home brew trade is at the bottom of the pecking order.  This dynamic can be seen at harvest time when the status of a cultivar that had a scheduled harvest date is changed to will not be available for sale this season.

I think that some of this goes both ways. With the demand today, some hops are sold out, and there won’t be any left. Others such as CTZ, may have leftovers and will be pelletized or made into extract.

The brewers go to the farmers and select hops from lots on the table. They get first pick to fill their contracts, and some of those are pretty cheap per pound most years. The brokers have contracts too, and they get their selections. What filters down to the homebrewers in the LHBS trade is the leftovers.

As a side comment, there are some hops that are not exactly what you are thinking they are. Packages of “Hallertau” is whatever they have. Ron Pattinson has said that EKG is often a blend of the hops on hand. Every now and then someone asks online about very high AA on Hallertau or EKG that is outside the range for those, and one could guess how that happened.

Edit - Yakima Chief is running the pelletizer though out the year to meet orders.
http://yakimachief.com/index.php/aboutus/hop-process-div/

I have seen “centennial type” which means it is a blend of hops meant to sub for centennial. Pretty sure that gets filtered down to homebrewers as plain old centennial. I’ve always been careful to get East Kent Goldings and Whatever specific variety of harletauer that us available as opposed to Kent Goldings and hallertauer

I am not attempting to derail this conversation, but I discovered something interesting while attempting to identify the hop with no name.  Lynn Kemme told me that there are at least four different hop cultivars that are currently being grown in the U.S. that are called Cascade.  That blew my mind.

I don’t know if things have changed since Yakima Chief and Hop Union merged, but I know the recent operations manager at Hop Union before the merge.  He was working hard to get ALL the hop pelletizing done by the end of January specifically because of the freshness issue.  (He now works for BSG here in the valley).

As you know different hop varieties are harvested at different times in the season, so that is what largely determines when a hop gets pelletized.  What I’m not sure of is whether AA content determines when in the pelletizing schedule a hop gets done.  I wonder at this because high AA hops are extremely flammable.  A couple of years ago a hop warehouse burned because they were not used to the unique handling necessary for very high AA hops.

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