So back in 2009 when my homebrewing was going full bore and life hadnt yet thrown the curveball at me, I purchased one pound each of whole leaf centennial and cascade hops. They have been sitting in my parents freezer since I received them, never even opened. I had planned on doing a series of single hop experiments. They are packed in vacuum sealed grey bags that I am assuming is flushed with co2 or nitro. Pretty sure its safe to say that if they were not flushed then they are compost. I cant check right now for specifics because they are 45 mins away in my parents basement. Any thoughts? Still worth using? Not for a single hop series but just in general? Finally able to start brewing again and hoping I didnt waste however much I spent on them. If I did, such is life, but it would be nice to use them.
The only way to tell is open up the bags and give them a look/smell. If they're faded or brown colors and have cheesy aromas I'd dump them. Also, there's no real way of telling how much the of the alpha acids have degraded so your bittering calculations could be off. I'd dump them and buy fresh. If you like making lambic they could be ok (probably have to age them further outside of the freezer first, or artificially speed it up with an oven).
Open them and see (smell). But even under optimal storage conditions, I would expect 2009 hops to be pretty well faded, both taste/aroma and IBUs-wise. BTW, vacuum sealed doesn't imply flushed with anything.
4 years is a pretty long time, even if they were vacuum sealed. Some brewing softwares have alpha degradation calculations. I use promash and it wouldn't look good for these at that age - http://www.promash.com/Software/Changes/Misc/HopD.html There's no way I would use hops that old in a typical beer. It's just not worth it. You're talking about maybe $30 worth of hops? My advice would be to embrace the fading. Dump these hops in a paper bag and leave them at room temp somewhere dry. They'll finish losing all their bitterness and then you can use them to brew lambics.
on the scale of hop storage qualities, Cascade is practically off the chart. some hops show significant loss of oils after 6 months in cold storage. Cascade is by far the worst offender, can't recall Centennial. even still, you could probably use a full pound of either in the boil and make an ok beer. it will be a mystery calculating your bittering but why not?
yeah, it's a lot. maybe not 1 1/2 gallons if you tilt your pot and let them drain a bit? but that is the price. use a full pound a make a reasonable if unbalanced hop bomb, or use a few ounces of unknown aa% and quality and make an unbalanced mess. that's my take anyway. Cheers.
Thanks for the thoughts, pretty much what I expected to hear. Maybe ill just do as billandsuz says and throw it all in one batch and see what happens. If they are not cheesed anyway.
