The other day I went into the homebrew shop and ended up with around 5 pounds of older hops, 2014 harvest. Now I need to figure out what to do with them.
I ended up with 8 oz of lemon drop, 32 oz of falconers flight, 32 oz merkur, and about 5 other varieties. What would everyone else do?
Personally, the first thing I would do is open the bags and smell the hops, very deeply, to assess their freshness. Even if the bags were well sealed, purged, and stored, it’s hard to imagine that 4-year-old hops would be fresh enough to use enthusiastically.
Smell them and be critical. If they don’t smell great then don’t use them. It makes no sense to spend hours of your time using old ingredients to produce marginal beer, unless that’s your goal. I recently opened a bag of 2017 Hallertau and they smelled FANTASTIC. I had been trying to use up a bag of 2016 Hallertau. Makes me wish I had been using the 2017 crop all summer. We live, we learn.
I recently used some hops I got for free at a Homebrew Con a few years ago. They were stored in my freezer vacuum sealed and called “Yakima Experimental Grapefruit” from the 2014 harvest. The beer turned out great and tasted as if it had the correctly calculated IBU’s.
So even four year old hops can be good if stored properly.
I have hops that old in my freezer that still smell and taste great. Give them a smell and see how they are. If they still smell bright and fresh then use them as you would any other hops. If they smell cheesy, freezer burnt, or like hay/dried grass then they might be worth keeping to age for sour beer (or give to somebody who brews sour beer) but I wouldn’t use them otherwise. If the shop kept them in the freezer in vacuum sealed bags then they are probably still great.
If they aren’t good for beer, use them in potpourri as an air freshener. Who wouldn’t like their bathroom to smell like hops?
if they are still good, i would use all the lemon drop in a pale. bitter with magnum or something of your choice and all the lemon drop at 5min and dry.