Another Shot at Frozen Fresh Hops

Uh, no I'm not. I literally say in my post :Of course, that's if there was the ability to give brewers in areas outside the NW the opportunity to brew with fresh hops more easily.
If the hops are showing up degraded then right now there isn't a method.

 

Nearly spit my breakfast stout….errr, coffee out, I was laughing so hard.

 

Oh, FFS, there is and you refuse to use it.

 

You’re right, it is fun.

I stand by the assertion that the region producing the vast majority of the fresh hop beers made in this country get to define the term used to describe them. Or are you also going to start also telling Eskimos they can’t use at least 50 different words to describe different types of snow? I wouldn’t go there but you do you

 

I'm sure pelletized hops were a novelty and frowned upon at one time.
Maybe the same will be true with this process, but I'm doubtful it will be cost effective.

 

I disagree that most people have a clear idea of what to expect from a FH hop (wet hop) beer. As Eric from Kern River put it in another thread, "malt and chlorophyll" probably describes a lot of people's impression of FH beer outside the PNW.

I think what Sierra is seeking to gain (well, communicate at least) is that the recipe calls for the "first flush" hops of the harvest season. Meaning there is a time window in which it can be brewed, as opposed to their other ipas that are brewed year round with hops of varying ages.

 

I just used this product in a "fresh hop" pale ale earlier this week, both in the dry hop and in the brite tank. We'll see how it turns out next week. One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that these hops have had some leaf matter removed, hence the "CGX" (similar to Cryo hops), so I don't expect them to taste/smell exactly the same as whole fresh hops. They should have more impact while using less volume, and also soak up less beer so less loss in the process. As far as I know, the Fresh Cryo hop product from Yakima Chief is still available but only in small quantities.

 

Frozen will never be Fresh, but everyone that markets them says they are. This is true for many different types of food. The older generation used to freeze white bread (the cheap variety you ate bologne sandwiches with). They say you can freeze anything, and it is the same. It isn’t.

You have to accept that frozen isn’t fresh. If you accept that, you CAN find a “best”, but it is best within that category. It won’t be better than fresh.

 

It would be interesting to see how this product compares to the oil that Sierra Nevada makes for their headhunter IPA. Ballantine also used a hop oil in their IPA. I wonder if that oil was made from dried or wet hops?

 

The hop oil used by P. Ballantine & Sons was distilled from Bullion hops at the brewery in Newark, so they were dried. Ballantine had contract growers in Sonoma County, CA and in Oregon (likely in Washington state, too) - so distilling from undried hops would not have been practical cross-country.

But the Essential Oil from Hops, distilled from fresh/undried hops was being sold by hop dealer C. Clemens Horst Co. as early as the 1920s (during Prohibition, no less):

... and supposedly the hop product used by Blatz for their Tempo Beer was a liquid extract rather than whole "wet hops".

 

Thanks Jess, I figured you would have some information on that. It makes me think of the biblical verse about there being nothing new under the sun.

To me, the liquid extract is a lot more practical, much less expensive to ship and store and also no additional losses due to hop absorption in the secondary. Then again, the liquid requires additional processing at the start that whole hops do not.

The real question though is, what makes a better tasting beer?

 

There are lots of ‘new’ hop products available today. In a past thread Jeff Erway was kind enough to post:

“We have used CO2 hop extracts for bitterness in our IPAs since we opened and, in my mind, its a far more sustainable way to get the majority of your bitterness than using T90s. We have or do currently use several different "advanced hop products" in Elevated as well as some seasonals.”

Jeff (@erway), have you used any of the new Frozen Fresh Hops products? What are thoughts on this topic?

Cheers!

 

Fatheads make a "HeadHunter" IPA, not Sierra Nevada....fyi

 

Thanks, I should have written Hop Hunter. I think autocorrect got me on that one, I’ve never had a headhunter