I have noticed that freshly picked hops have an amazing aroma that just isn’t fully there when the hops are dried, and I mean freshly dried hops just a couple days off the vine. Fresh, undried hops are rarely used, however because of a reported grassy, vegetal, taste that I assume comes from the fresh cones. So I’m thinking that this weekend when I pick the remainder of my cascades I will pull open the cones and use tweezers to pull out the yellow lupilin glands so I get the hops goodness without the green flavor the rest of the cones will give me. I’m way too busy for this but I can’t help it unless someone knows why adding this fresh yellow parts in place of a late hop addition won’t work. Please tell me this won’t work so I don’t waste this time.
I think you’ll quit after 5 hop cones whether it works or not. Sounds like insane work.
You should be able to twease about 2 IBUs per hour.
You don’t know me well enough. I am going to thresh and winnow homegrown barley this weekend. I picked elderberries tonight and make my own bitters. Don’t tell me its hard, tell me it won’t work. Maybe I make a gallon batch that I put the yellow parts in at bottling. Do you think it will taste amazing if done right?
How are you drying the hops? At room temperature or heating them up? Also you don’t have to dry them all the way. You could try partially drying them and seeing if that gives the flavor you want without the grassiness.
Using tweezers for this would be rather labor intensive. With hops being a cousin of cannabis and with your desired end result being essentially hop-hashish, I would just Google how to make hashish. Good luck, mon!
Fresh hop ales are becoming more and more common. I’d honestly try that first. If you do find too much grassiness for your liking, then by all means proceed with your diabolical plan. It should work.
The key thing here is freshness. Fresh hops are a lot like fresh peas or corn - their window for peak freshness is quite small. Ideally, you want to be picking your hops during the mash/boil and dump them all in in the last few minutes or at flameout. That may be the real challenge of your experiment - being able to collect enough lupulin in a short enough window where it is still quite fresh by the time you use it. Good luck!
Its on hashishrecipe.dea/gov. You enter your home address and they bring you the stuff you need.
Edit - had to remove the www. to limit the work load in Quantico
Fixed that link for you, Jim
You’re too funny
The w ife and I will brew out haverst ale tomorrow. The hops go right into the boil and whirlpool. Last year it was a little grassy at first, with some time it became one of our favorites of the brewing season.
even lots of commercial breweries are making “fresh hop” beers. I enjoy the taste personally.
Turns out they didn’t need my address, they just told me to enable “location services”. They were very helpful, asked a lot of questions so they could get me exactly the info I needed.
I dry them on screens in the dark at about 65 degrees then vacuum seal and freeze. that goes as well as it can I think.
I think I’ll try a few things. If I can get enough time to brew this weekend my GF and I can pick cones during the boil and whirpool. I’ll use some galena that I just dried for bittering, maybe freshly dried cascade for 10 minutes, and fresh cascade for aroma. I’ll make a strait forward pale ale recipe.
Also, I’ll pick some of the cascade lupilin out of maybe a dozen cones, put in a pint glass and pour maybe a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale into the glass and see how that is.
I have one other idea. Pack a bunch of ripped in half cones in a qt mason jar, fill with 100 proof vodka, shake, let steep a few minutes, strain and seal. I could use this to dose individual beers and/or add at bottling. I think this would be a way of preserving the fresh aroma and flavor without too much work. Sound good?
How do you know the that the rest of the hop doesn’t contribute desirable flavors? You’ve come up with a laborious, possibly useless, plan based on a guess that you don’t even know is right. Doesn’t make sense, man.
If you;re drying them in the dark to prevent skunking, don’t bother. They won’t skunk without the presence of yeast.
I’ve heard they brown up if dried in light. Where I dry them is naturally dark so I’m not going to extra trouble.
I think you may have posted this before seeing my later post. I hope to try the whole leaf hops in a beer also so I’ll hopefully answer my original guess about that. My evidence that they won’t contribute desirable flavors is admittedly anecdotal: one beer I drank 3 years ago and what I’ve read. I think that the Brewer’s Garden book said something unflattering about fresh hops.
Old British brewing books don’t have good things to say about the quality of American hops. Catty.
Things change. Brew your beers, try some commercial wet hop beers, make your own opinion based on your taste.