Whole leaf hops brewing. Resources and or suggestions?

I adjust the utilization down a little, or Promash does, and I just through them in.

 

Wet hop for tha win!

 

From the reading I did to find what to do with my Chinooks I found out that use them same as regular hops but use 4 times as much by weight. If you don't have enough for a whole batch of beer, substitute them in as aroma and flavor. If this is not completely correct can someone add?

Can't wait to try it as I just tasted a killer all Chinook beer from DC Brau. This is one beer I think many of the ratings were done by folks without noses or tongues.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/25327/95916

 

I have been looking into this too, since I'll have my first homegrown hops this year, hopefully. In general, you'll realize about 10% less utilization with dried whole leaf as compared to pellets. Estimating your homegrown hop AA% is a wild card, but I'd probably shoot for the low end of the typical range for Centennial...say 9% AA. Dried whole leaf will absorb a lot more wort in the kettle, so plan for that ahead of time. If you are not drying them, then folks recommend 4-5X quantity when using fresh from the bine wet hops. I have also heard recommendations to avoid dry hopping with wet hops as it may introduce a grassy/vegetal taste. There was a session on hop growing (and brewing with) at NHC this year, which you can download if you are an AHA member:

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/lets-brew/homebrewing-seminars/2013

 

Did not think of the wet part, so as said use 5 times the weight, or some say go for 6 times with wet to really do it.

Wet hops are 80% water, 20% plant matter, commercial dried hops are 8% water and 92% plant mater. So 92/20 =4.6 and I roundup to 5.

 

Depends on what you mean. As other have answered differently above, are you asking about wet hopping (using fresh hops right off the bine w/o drying them) or are you simply asking about using whole leaf hops after drying your harvest? I wouldn't say that dry whole leaf hops have less utilization, they have the standard utilization, pellet gets higher utilization. A brewing software program should be asking if it is whole or pellet or plug and calculating it accordingly. The big issue is going to be in separating the wort from the hops on a few levels. One, whole cones will absorb more of the wort than pellet. I typically calculate between 12 and 16 fl. oz. of wort loss to each ounce of hops, around 6 fl.oz for pellets. The other issue might be the way you separate the wort itself, siphons can suck up the hop leafs/cones and get clogged, and a plain copper pickup tube without a filter can do the same.

Once you have your system and recipe set for these factors, you can swap out dry whole leaf hops for fresh/wet hops and use 5X the weight. I have always heard that they will soak up more wort, but they do not. As hopfenunmaltz stated above, wet hops are already 80% water by weight and dry is 8%, so you are looking at dry absorbing more because it has more room for water. Look at it this way, take 2 pints of water and 2 sponges, fill one sponge from the tap with water to 80% and drop it into the pint of water, wring out the other sponge till moist but not saturated, and then measure how much water is left after removing the sponges. The "dry" sponge will absorb more. With wet hops you have 5X more hop mass and will have to adjust accordingly, but I would only calculate in the recipe for 6 fl.oz of absorbtion per ounce of hops.

Another option you have with whole leaf (wet or dry) is to use paint strainer bags for all your additions, after the chill is done (with sanitized hands) you can ring out as much liquid from the hops as you'd like and not lose much wort at all, maye 3-4 fl.oz per ounce of hops?

 

Another option you have with whole leaf (wet or dry) is to use paint strainer bags for all your additions, after the chill is done (with sanitized hands) you can ring out as much liquid from the hops as you'd like and not lose much wort at all, maye 3-4 fl.oz per ounce of hops?[/quote]
Do you find that your utilization goes down using a bag? I would like to go that route. I just did an IPA this weekend with 10 oz of whole leaf and lost nearly 2 gallons to trub and hops at the end of the boil. I like using whole leaf but hate the absorption.

 

Do you find that your utilization goes down using a bag? I would like to go that route. I just did an IPA this weekend with 10 oz of whole leaf and lost nearly 2 gallons to trub and hops at the end of the boil. I like using whole leaf but hate the absorption.[/quote]


When I used to do it this way I didn't really find a big drop in my utilization. I tend to like my hoppy beers to have all the punch in the nose and tongue as opposed to the throat so I shoot for lots of late hop additions and then hit it with a dose of bittering hops to ensure I get a little tongue scraping action in there. I'm more for taste then bitterness. All that to say that my system doesn't give me high IBUs and my recipes are set up for hop bursting which gives a rounder bitterness as opposed to the sharper bitterness of early additions. My 60 IBUs don't taste like the 60 IBUs of the IPA brewed professionally in town, but that didn't change when I dropped the bags and went with straight boil hops. Some of that could be the high oil content of my beers as well. Even if you get lower utilization and your 85 IBUs is actually only 75, most of us probably won't notice.

 

When I used to do it this way I didn't really find a big drop in my utilization. I tend to like my hoppy beers to have all the punch in the nose and tongue as opposed to the throat so I shoot for lots of late hop additions and then hit it with a dose of bittering hops to ensure I get a little tongue scraping action in there. I'm more for taste then bitterness. All that to say that my system doesn't give me high IBUs and my recipes are set up for hop bursting which gives a rounder bitterness as opposed to the sharper bitterness of early additions. My 60 IBUs don't taste like the 60 IBUs of the IPA brewed professionally in town, but that didn't change when I dropped the bags and went with straight boil hops. Some of that could be the high oil content of my beers as well. Even if you get lower utilization and your 85 IBUs is actually only 75, most of us probably won't notice.[/quote]
I guess I should have asked it more along the lines of extraction. You don't notice any drop-off in oil extraction either? I like to hop burst as well. The IPA I just did had 9 of the 10 ounces added from 5 minutes through cooling.

 

I free float my leaf hops. I found that if I constrict them, and they swell, I get some lower utilization.

I just brewed a Black IPA with 9.5 ounces of all whole leaf in the boil. All added 20 min or less, and 4 ounces at flame out. Drained it off pretty easy, just put my sanitized mash paddle up near the valve and let it rip. The bonus is whole leaf act as a filter.

You will lose some volume, but thats where you have to know that, and adjust. I brewed for a 6 gallon batch, knowing the losses so I'd have enough to fill a keg when it's all said and done. Bonus is that my fermenter is super clean as well, so little loss except for the beer near/in the cake.

I've never done a wet hop ale, so can't help there, but I pretty much try and use whole leaf only when I brew if possible. 75% of my hop inventory is whole leaf.

 

Not really. Then again, my system (or maybe it's my senses) doesn't seem to get me great extraction of hop flavors and aromas, another reason I hop the snot out of it at the end. I have been throwing everything in loose the past 9 months since I got tired of cleaning the paint strainer bags out after brew day (too cheap to just buy new ones every time), but my filter on my pickup tube keeps getting clogged so I may have to go back to putting the hops in bags or in one big bag as I go.