What’s YOUR take on wet-hops vs. dried hops

wet hops remind me of fresh buds but I'm past that point in my life

 

The main difference is all the chlorophyll your getting in the brew at the end. The resin flavor comes through a lot stronger but also drops off a lot quicker. My(our wet hop) is brewed with pellets,hop powder and tons and tons of wet hops to off set the chlorophyll a little.
McGirt aka Head Donkey
Melvin Brewing

 

A friend of mine brought some of your IPA’s to me as he passed by my brewery on a road trip. Absolutely phenomenal beers. I might even go as far as to say they were the best IPA’s I’ve had in 2017.

At Tombstone, we did 3 wet hop beers, all NE style. One of them was 100% wet hops and the other 2 used pellets and oils. The most popular one was actually the 100% wet hopped pale ale. It seems that the chlorophyll flavor was offset by the esters.

 

I swear my taste buds probably can't tell the difference, all I get is its a well constructed beer or not. Any well done beer is a pleasure no matter to me what kind of hop delivery system they use. I wish I could tell the difference but I'm not convinced I could.

 

Thanks for the props! Yea if we went 100% wet hops we'd go broke. All of our wet hop beers come out looking like NE IPAs. I fine and bottle them and let them set warm for 1 day seems to drop a lot of the hop haze out not all. I'm not sure what finning they use at Comrade but theirs are always bright.
McGirt aka Head Donkey
Melvin Brewing

 

Yeah, it was wildly expensive. We do 15 BBL batches, so we can sell every drop on the release day. We wouldn’t have been able to sell kegs at a price point that would be good for consumers, but 4-packs worked out decently well. Lower margins than normal, but worth it for the experience.

 

Good for you guys that's killer! I believe our price point for a keg is about 600+ for a 1/2 bbl. we here at Melvin abuse hops haha. I'll have the bean counters see if we can do 4 packs, they will probably say no. We would probably have to charge so much people wouldn't buy. Our location in the middle of nowhere makes getting the hops here then shipping out the final product very expensive. Easy to sell by the pint for around 11-12 bucks more appealing to the other owners.
McGirt
Melvin Brewing

 

I know this is a lot to ask, certain things being proprietary and all, but can either (or both) of you fellas share anything as to technique regarding these beers? Not asking for exact recipes, but stuff like what varietals of wet hops you use, when you add them, and amounts would be pretty awesome. Techniques for the dry/wet mixed beers would be awesome as well. Wouldn't mind grain bills, yeast strain(s), and fermentation temperatures and length, as well, but I realize that I'm asking a lot already.

This is purely academic, btw, and probably belongs in the homebrew forum. I don't plan to make a wet-hopped beer, but I'd love to compare and contrast the differences between the techniques that you use to make both and, possibly, the reasoning behind them.

 

@honkey

Thanks for sharing your exchange of ideas and experience on here. Such things do help some of us learn more about the talents and experience required to do what you two do for a living.

 

Certainly wish more brewers were active and open about the things that they do. I certainly understand why they might not be, with things being as competitive as they are and all, but it's still nice to have first-hand accounts of things instead of all the wild conjecture that often pollutes boards like this. Which, btw, I can be guilty of at times.

 

For me, wet hop beers basically taste like grass clippings after they've had a few days to ferment in the mower bag. Not for me.

The only one I can recall liking was the old Jack's Abby wet hop lager, which was just a nice golden not particularly hoppy lager, and they don't even make it anymore.

 

Yea I used to be really tight lipped. But we all are a big community so might as well share (not everything though haha). Let's all make bombass beers for our peeps. Remember Wutang is for the eclipse.
McGirt aka Head Donkey
Melvin Brewing

 

I meant Wutang is for the children. Stupid I phone

 

Based on some things I've seen during the years I've participated on here, I'd say it's not so much being competitive that reduces participation by brewers as it is the simple level of rudeness and/or nastiness that some people hiding behind computer screens and made up names can show. (I guess because they have so little to offer on their own.)

 

We are pretty open about our recipes and techniques at Tombstone. I don’t do any bittering additions for IPA’s or Pale Ales, so the only hot side addition for our wet hops is a modified hop back. I fill the mash tun with the hops and then transfer the hot wort back to the tun stir it for 10 minutes, and then start transferring back to the kettle to pump through the heat exchanger into the fermenter.

The beers with pellets and oils were then dry hopped in our normal manner (day 3 of fermentation, or when the beer is about 1°P away from terminal gravity and the fermenter was capped.

For the Pale Ales I used 200 lbs (a little over 13 lbs per BBL) of wet hops in the hopback. For the IPA I used 450 (30 lbs per bbl) lbs of wet hops in the hop back. The pale ale that was dry hopped with wet hops used 120 (8 lbs per bbl) lbs in the dry hop.

2 of the beers used mostly floor malted Maris Otter, flaked oats, and flaked wheat. The other one used Weyermann Premium Pils malt instead of Maris Otter. They all used Imperial Organic’s A38 Juice yeast strain. Fermentation never takes longer than 4 days for ales and the beers get cold crashed as soon as it passes a diacetyl test (usually day 7). I cold condition (no fining for NE style beers for us) for at least 2-3 days before packaging so normally grain to glass is 11-12 days.

 

We here at Melvin use a 33% each mix of Ctz, Nugget and a proprietary hop. Those all go into the whirlpool. As for
Bitterness we use cryogenic powder because yeild is so low we squeeze as much as we can out of the kettle. We then dryhop the shit out of it with powder, pellets and wet hop. Not giving up the recipe but hope tha helps a little.
McGirt
Melvin Brewing

 

That's unfortunate and very sad. Would certainly like to nurture more of this type of participation and open sharing. It is part of other boards to which I belong and that makes them wonderful sources of information.

@honkey and @flyone , you guys are awesome! Thanks a million for the insight.

 

Thanks. Yea I gues I really am not bothered by snide comments etc. just like to share and have fun.
McGirt
Melvin Brewing

 

There’s rude stuff everywhere, you’ve got to deal with it on occasion if you want to have these types of conversations. I have fun sharing my brewery experiences and telling people how we do what we do. For some people in the industry it is just another job, but for me it’s an passion/addiction and I consider myself very fortunate to be able to make a living doing it.