Looking for some opinions about hop additions for a wet hopped IPA. I am finally harvesting my Cascades and I think I’m going with the wet hop this year. I hear ~10x normal quantity? Should I go with a hop burst and dump them all at 5 minutes with some for whirlpool? Spread them out throughout the boil? 60, 15, flameout, whirlpool? What say the Forum?
Thanks!
Dave
I’m speaking from a position of having read, rather than experience, but the water content of wet hops is 75-80%, which would indicate to me that you’d use 4-5 times more than you would otherwise. Without knowing the AA content of the hops, I’d limit use to whirlpool/dry hop.
I’ve done a few of these. The first one, I used wet hops throughout. I tasted like a chlorophyll beer to me lol. Others loved it. My recommendation is to bitter with pellets. Toss your wet hops in at the end of the boil and whirlpool. In two to three weeks, your left over wet hops will be dried leaf hops. Dry hop with the freshly dried hops.
I think with the wet hops, 5-7 times the weight of dried hops is realistic. It’s really just a crap shoot since you don’t know your alpha units either. Just make sure you can easily filter them out whether you put them in a muslin bag or hop spider or something.
I might add. Another time I did one, I had a few friends over. As we harvested them off the bine, we just tossed them in the kettle. That was fun. I find that wet-hopped beers are more for the novelty, so fun is good.
Thanks for the posts. I ended up making 15G of IPA. I added 3oz of Magnum for bittering and 1.5# of wet Cascades at 5 minutes. I then whirlpooled for 30 minutes. Looking forward to the result.
I like the idea of the dry hop. I have the three muslin bags still in a bucket so maybe I’ll dry them out and do it. Not sure if I want to deal with it at this point as I’m feeling a bit lazy.
Dave
I think Frank was referring to hops harvested, but not used in the boil or whirlpool, not saving those already used for dry hopping later. Those will be a mess and you wont know what they will bring to the table. If you harvest 3#, you could then use your 1.5#( that you dried while the beer was fermenting) during whirlpool and the other 1.5# to dry hop, at least if I understand his post correctly
Right, duh…Only had 1.5# of wet this year so they are all gone. I was kinda wondering about that…
Hops are about 20% solids, so you need 5 times as much.
Yeah, definitely don’t ring out the hops you used in the boil for dry hops lol. I was referring to if you had more hops that you didn’t use to just dry them and dry hop.
I’m not sure where you are at, but my crop was pretty much non-existent this year. We had no rain in NE Ohio from about mid June through July. The crazy thing is, my first season for my hops was my best season. It’s not supposed to work that way. I’m sure there are several factors. Weather, of course, but I think I took care of them a little better that year too. Chinook is probably my best producer here.
Crop was way down this year. About half my normal harvest…I’m in Valley Forge, PA outside of Philly.
I’ve found you can never use too many fresh hops. The flavors are very subtle and easily overcome by malt, so the more hop, the better. Throw all your fresh hops in the end. A tad of bittering hop and a tad of dry hop as was mentioned above. Be prepared to make a terrible beer–90% of fresh hop beers are revolting. The other 10% are sublime…