Wet hop season 2017--the most wonderful time of the year!

I would think that for the first batch of Sierra Nevada Celebration that could indeed be the case. When they brew a batch of Celebration in November that batch will not be using 6 week old hops, right?

Cheers!

 

Yeah the Amarillo must have been about two weeks before pelletizing. If Idaho 7 is pelletized sooner, then yes I’d be able to start pulling off my contract at that time. Roy Farms is not one I’m familiar with. My tours have been of Crosby and Hopsteiner (German location). I’m assuming that they are smaller and not blending lots. Interestingly, I have found that a LITTLE bit of oxidation can help aromas develop better and can also allow sulfuric aromas to dissipate (pelletizing can have a similar effect of sulfur compounds). I wonder if they get any of those effects by going straight from kilning to pelletizing without a short storage in bales.

I’m assuming that the more varieties and more lots necessitates baling before pelletizing for larger suppliers

 

Wet hop beer season's my favorite too, but several months ago I moved from a city to a far suburb with a much constricted range of beer options, and I haven't seen a single wet hopped brew yet. Sad trombone.

 

Another consideration here is harvest time (e.g., early hop harvest, late hop harvest). For example, in consultation with Stan Hieronymus I changed my harvest time for my backyard hop plant that I use to produce a wet hopped beer to being harvested later; Stan suggested that I permit about 30% of the hop cone to get brown. This browning is an indication that slight oxidation is occurring to the hop cones on the plant. This has indeed resulted in an improvement to the aroma profile of my wet hopped beers. I have no idea whether commercial breweries also adopt this harvest strategy. Maybe @Texwild can provide some input here?

Cheers!

 

That is probably the best advice without having testing equipment that commercial growers have. I was talking to some of the guys at Crosby when I was selecting our Amarillo about how their harvest times are determined and how it was done historically. The topic came up because the Amarillo harvest happened a week later than it was projected when I was booking plane tickets in late August. It used to be a bit more farmer experience (wait for 30% browning or for the resin to cover 50% of the flower along with tracking the harvest week from year to year). Now they are constantly measuring total oils and HSI along with a sensory panel. The Chinook I got had some browning but Amarillo was very dark green and yellow with very little browning.

 

You're exactly right. It's both. We select the hop varietals for Celebration from a handful of farms when the hops are still growing in the field. Our entire lot of Celebration hops is picked and dried (by varietal) and shipped to the brewery. We begin brewing as soon as they arrive in-house (usually within 2 days of drying). The first rounds of Celebration are using dried hops that are about two days old.
As the season rolls along, we brew until about mid November. The oldest hops of the harvest are at most 6-weeks.

The differentiator here (fresh hops versus older hops) is that for nearly all other beers, we're still using the hops from the previous year's harvest. Not all of the hops for the year come to us all at once. But Celebration hops all HAVE to be from the recent harvest (in this case 2017) and are segregated from the others so they don't find their way into different beers (and vice versa.)

 

Weedy, this is from the Roy Farms website:

“Harvest Fresh Pellets®

Our baling units are set up to perform as gentle a “squeeze” on the hops as possible. We have minimized friction at baler walls, perform multiple fills and presses per bale to allow settling of product, and pay careful attention to maximum weight and compression pressure. Despite this, there will always be some disruption to the lupulin glands in the cone which allow for oxidation of brewing resins and essential oils.

While some brewers prefer a bit of oxidation on their hops as a positive contribution to flavor, a growing part of the aroma market desires as close “green hop” profile as possible. We meet this need by moving the carefully dried aroma hops directly to a pellet mill and bypass baling entirely. This provides for increased preservation of alpha acids and superior aroma profiles.

The pelletizer is configured with a bore size and compression ratio to allow production of outstanding pellets at temperatures below the limit at which oxidation is a problem. Though the pellets are carefully compressed, they still will fit into standard industry boxes for shipment.”

http://www.royfarms.com/hops

Given you previous statement of “I have found that a LITTLE bit of oxidation can help aromas develop better…”, if you were to purchase hops from Roy Farms would it be your preference to not buy the Harvest Fresh Pellets?

Cheers!

 

Bill, have you brewed the first batch of Celebration yet? If not, do you have a target date for the first batch?

Cheers!

Jack

 

It’s hard to say without sampling them, but I suspect I wouldn’t be as happy with them as I am with Crosby Farms and Hop Head Farms. When they are fresh after kilning there are some aromas that I want to go away. Two of the Amarillo lots I smelled a few weeks ago were really good, but they had a diesel like aroma which would dissipate. I ended up selecting one that was mild on the diesel and very floral. I expect that lot to give a lot of ruby red grapefruit character. Lot selections are a bit tricky in that sense because you have to know (mostly through experience) which aromas will go away and which will come out more. If Roy’s statements are taken at face value, it sounds like that would be easier for newer brewers to figure out exactly what they’ll be getting. If they are small like I’m imagining though, they might not do lot selections at all

 

Yes, we've brewed several batches already. The very first beers should start hitting select markets (and the breweries) this week. Our Oktoberfest did better than anticipated this year, and we're lucky to have the very first brews of Celebration ready to roll ahead of schedule.

 

To me, almost all FH beers are more floral and delicate, often reminding me more of German hop strains than their more potent, dried versions. Maybe that's because of the influence of relatively concentrated hop pellets, but I've never been wowed, or floored, or smacked in the face by FH beers like I have some dry-hopped beers. Although there was one Mosaic I had this past week that was surprisingly dank compared to all the other more delicate ones I had during my trip through the PNW.

Born Yesterday draws an obvious contrast to my general take here, but I've always wondered how they really get it. I mean, unless they record the entire process, who says they are using 100%-fresh-off-the-bine-hops? Or have they even said that?

Honestly, all that is to say, I think the flash of craze each Fall for fresh and/or wet hopped beers is wholly unwarranted. I'm not saying it's not worth trying when available, but to go out of your way to either attain wet hops, or purchase beer that was brewed with wet hops, or even freshly kilned hops, doesn't seem like it pays dividends to me. I mean, if I recall, Jester King--(and granted, they're almost exclusively making aged and funky beers)--uses many years-old hops, and somehow manages to achieve a dank, lime and minty profile in their Wytchmaker, albeit a funky profile.

 

Bill, I am glad to hear the good news there!!

I am anxious to buy some Celebration beers. This beer has been a favorite of mine for over 20 years.

Cheers to Sierra Nevada!

 

I do not know if they solely utilize wet (fresh) hops to brew Born Yesterday but below is a cool video from 2014 which shows the wet (fresh) hops they used to brew that year.

Cheers!

 

I’m not saying they definitely didn’t use 100% wet hops, but it is not common to do so. If bittering additions are used, they are almost never wet hops. Most brewers get all their wet hops in one day, so they either do a big whirlpool or hop back addition (this is by far the most common way) and then dry hop with pellets, or they have a beer waiting in the fermenters for dry hopping with wet hops (got to love the oxymoron). At Tombstone this year, we took two different deliveries so the timing worked out to where I could do 1 with 100% wet hops in both the hot side and the cold side. The other two used big hopback additions and were dry hopped with pellets. Adding wet hops post fermentation is difficult, bad for shelf life (which is already bad with wet hopped beers), and the risk for contamination is somewhat elevated versus dry hopping with dried hops.

 

Did you use wet hops for bittering? In other words a complete 100% wet hopped beer?

Cheers!

 

Seems like an awfully expensive, challenging, and cost-ineffective marketing ploy. It's very labor and cost-intensive to make wet-hopped beers happen, and they seldom cost more than standard IPAs, so I don't think simply being marketing makes much sense.

Further, wet-hopped beers, for better or worse, definitely usually taste drastically different, so I don't think it can be called a ploy in that sense either.

Just because you seem to not care for it does not make it a gimmick or a ploy.

To cut this off at the pass, obviously there is marketing involved, but I really don't think it's solely marketing.

 

It was 100% wet hops, but no bittering. I almost never using bittering additions except for stouts, barleywines, old ales, etc.

 

Lagunitas Born Yesterday and Founders Harvest Ale are my two favorites, followed by Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

 

For me, the best descriptor is "brighter" although that may sound weird.