What's Brewing - June '17 edition

Pitched the cake on big brother today...big brother ended up being a 1.068 IPA...probably a good thing...as long as it's not too bitter and so far it's not...cheers all

 

How are you enjoying brewing with hop hash? Any good? Worthwhile?

 

Just "Hop Hash", mixed from various hop varieties, produced a mild but clean bittering with a clean citrus to stone fruit aroma and flavor. I feel like the overall hoppiness of the beer falls off quicker compared to pellets though. Interesting to play around with, but unless you can get variety specific hash, it's more of a novelty IMO. I have an all El Dorado hop hash IPA in a fermenter ready to go (just waiting for an Alpha King clone to kick to put it on tap), which is the only variety specific hop hash I've experimented with...I'll report back with how I like that within a couple of weeks. It's super easy to use and saves on loss due to absorption, so that's a plus. BTW, both of the hop hashes I've used came from Yakima Valley Hops.

 

I tried old school and new school and prefer new school. The reduction in oxygen by use of pellets over leaf; dry hopping in Primary and then in the keg; and closed transfers brought my IPAs to a higher quality. It was dramatic for me. More than temperature control sustained during fermentation, whirlpooling, or any other process refinement.

 

The hop hash seems hard to get in on. Any tips on getting an order in? I'm not good on tracking that stuff and would love to try it.

 

Just keged a hoppy siason. Except, I decided to split the batch and only dry hop half of it (czech saaz). I used Mangrove Jack French Saison and it tastes awesome.

 

Only place I know of that has the hash:
http://www.farmhousebrewingsupply.c...lash+Sale!&utm_campaign=Cryo&utm_medium=email

Seemed a bit pricey and I'm not sure which crop they are from. To put pricing in perspective, I've read to treat 1oz of hop hash the same as 2oz of pellets, since the AA is typically 22-26%

I'll probabaly wait to see pricing when Yakima has some avaialable

 

5 gallons of an Oberon clone chilling right now. Planning on bottling this batch for a late July Michigan camping trip.

 

I generally only buy hops from Yakima Valley Hops (or my LHBS) and they usually send out an email when they restock hop hash. I have seen other homebrew suppliers on the net charge the same for 1oz that Yakima Valley sells for 4oz, but that's way too much for how much hop hash is worth vs pellets IMO. It's usually available during harvest season mainly and disappears quick. Good luck!

 

Cryo hops is different from hop hash...hop hash is harvested from the pelletizing machine and contains lupulin glands + other plant material while cryo is just the lupulin glands harvested from supercooled hops.

 

Thanks for info. Are they used similarly?

 

On Monday I made a kettle soured saison. Thursday I bottled my Sofie clone, and did the boil of my sour saison using Nelson Sauvin hops @30, and FO. It was cooled and poured onto the Sofie yeast cake.

 

Yesterday night I brewed my new bitter after work. Based on a previous Bitter I have done, but with some tweaks.

Grist:
Golden Promise (42%)
Pilsner (25%)
White Wheat (6%)
Victory (6%)
Vienna (6%)
Carapils (6%)
Acid Malt (4%)
Chocolate Wheat (2%)
Melanoiden (1.5%)
Carafa Special II (1%)

Hops:
German Tradition
Hallertauer Mittelfrueh
Galaxy

English Ale WLP002

OG was 1.038
FG expected at 1.012
3.3% ABV
30 IBU
12 SRM


Last time this been was downright dangerous! So delicious and complex, but at such a low ABV... Went so so quick. Looking forward to this iteration.

 

Yep...both should have about double the alpha acids as the pelleted versions, so just add in at your normal addition times as you would pellets. Cryo should contain more concentrated lupulin glands, so it should have a higher AA% compared to hop hash, which also contains some leftovers from the cones that were pelletized.

 

So, if you were to use cryo, or hop hash would you have to adjust how much to use based off of average alpha acid X weight in oz in the original recipe?

 

Brewing an oatmeal stout and enjoying a pour of my young kolsch thats been lagering for 3.5 weeks. So far so good. Happy Saturday

 

Yep...I use Brewer's Friend recipe calculator to build my recipes and it's easy to add a new hop with whatever AA% you want while creating your recipe. You have to play with it a little if you sub cryo/hash instead of pellets to get your IBUs right, but it's not too tough to figure it out.

 

Getting ready for big sour /brett bottling. Big, as in several batches.

 

Brewed another golden ale, same grist as the last one but I went for a single infusion @152F instead of a step mash and went with a longer brewlength so got an OG of 1.040. Also changed the yeast, did a co pitch of London ESB and an american pale ale yeast from a new company here


OG 1.040
30 to 40 IBU
88.4 % Pilsner malt
8.4 % carahell
3.2 % Torrified wheat

Atlas 30g FWH
Cascade US 100g Steep 15 mins
Atlas 20g Steep 15 mins

Crossmyloof Brewery US Pale Ale yeast 10g
London ESB yeast 11g

I just sprinkled the yeast this time as my OG was nice and low and it was two packets for the batch. Hoping the US yeast takes it down nice and low and the ESB to give some fruityness to it. If it goes well I'll probably reuse the cake for a nice big burton/historic IPA

 

Just kegged 5 gallons of strawberry pilsner/wheat combo. In fermenter is an el dorado smash, and ten gallons of hefeweizen which hopefully I can keg in a week and a half.