Hey, I am trying to make plans for my brewclub to come to my hop yard and brew up a Harvest Ale this fall. (after THEY pick all the hops we will need ;)) I have Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, Willamette, Magnum, and Nugget. We have discussed brewing an American IPA, maybe a IIPA, 50 to 70 gallons.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
hari
My house IPA is bittered with Magnums at 60, and then I do Cascade at each 15 min interval. I absolutly love it. I typically aim for around 70 IBU’s.
I assume that you are refering to wet hopping the beer(s), is that correct? If so make sure that you use 5 to 6 times more hops (by weight) than you normally would for your flavor and aroma additions and then bitter with your regular dried bittering hops. If you really have enough hops to make 70 gallons, my vote would be to divise hop combos and make 3 or 4 different versions of IPA and a couple IIPA versions.
Or make a wet-hop single-hop IPA with each hop variety and then have a club discussion about the character of each hop variety.
Dammit jay, there’s no such thing as wet hops. If they are fresh picked off the bine, they are fresh. Ok, if you sauce them they may be wet, but who sauces their hops before putting them in the boil?
Yes, use 5-6 times the weight of fresh hops as dried hops, but I say use them for bittering too. You won’t know the IBUs for sure so it’s a bit of a crap shoot but that’s half the fun.
Is too such a thing! Soon as you toss the hops in the wort, it becomes a wet hop. Therefore, I proclaim all beers wet hopped.
Apparently you’ve never picked fresh hops, if you had you’d know that they are quite WET (umm roughly 5 to 6 times more moisture) compaired to the dried hops that we use most of the time. I never waste my perfectly fresh and delicious WET hops on bittering additions but that’s just me. :-* 
Yeah, I learned that lesson my first batch of wet hop. So many hops, and so much work harvesting them, wasted for nothing. I pledged from that first pint on, to never bitter with wet hops again.
I’ve picked plenty of fresh hops in my day, but never any wet ones. Maybe I’m just smart enough to do it when it’s not raining. :) They are no wetter than the fresh berries, apples, peppers, beans, peas, etc that I grow and pick every year. All very nice fresh, none of them wet unless I wash a little dirt off of them. 
smart man
Tom I understand that you don’t like my terminology. If something has 5 times the moisture weight than it normally would (because they’re normally dried) it could easily be called wet. The opposite of dry according to you is FRESH, but I’ll stick with the term WET. Thanks punk ;D
i guess fresh vs. dried works for pretty well for fruit
:D sometimes you’re an ass. still funny though
Only sometimes? ;D
This has always been my point. Fresh or dried is how we refer to fruit and herbs (no one says “I make my pizza with wet basil”). And really, fresh hops are at most a little damp, they’re no more wet than fresh cut flowers.
Nevermind that you could theoretically dry hop with wet hops (say what?), perhaps most importantly to me, “wet hops” doesn’t sound good to me at all. It is really just unappetizing. :-\
what was that antonym for the word dry? oh yeah, WET
ok hariii2 you can have your thread back, have fun with your hop harvest
But the hops I use aren’t dry. They’re dried. As in NOT FRESH. ;D
Giving up, eh?
oh i thought everyone agreed WET was better
I can think of a few cases where that is true, just not this one. 100% of the people I’ve asked today agree that FRESH is the way to go. ;D
yes, I’m sure that 1of1 persons agree with you. bathroom mirrror?
I don’t need a mirror to talk to myself. ;D
That’s good; I’m perfectly ok with folks who talk to themselves, but the idea of people talking to themselves via the bathroom mirror kind of freaks me out.
My only real problem with “fresh” is that, it’s usually a term for less storage time. If I have dried hops that are 3 years old and dried hops that are from the latest harvest, one is fresh, but both are dried.
This might be one of those “you spell tomatoe, I spell tomato” things. ;) Really I think we both can agree that you’re wrong, and I’m ok with that.
here’s one that will really “f” with you guys - Sierra Nevada refers to their Harvest Ale as ‘wet hopped’ while they refer to Celebration Ale as “fresh hopped”
ooooohhhhhh - you just got served ;D
What could have less storage time than hops that are picked and used within 24 hours? If you have dried hops that are 3 years old and dried hops that are from the latest harvest, both are dried, but neither one is fresh. If they have been dried, when would they stop being “fresh” to you, when the new harvest comes out? Seriously, I’m curious how long you would apply the word fresh to dried hops in this scenario? You might call them “new”, or “this year’s harvest”, or 2010 and 2007.
If I agreed with you, then we’d both be wrong.