I learned when I began brewing the most important part of brewing is cleanliness. Sanitize everything, they said. But here I am about to dump a bunch of Cascade hops in my Imperial IPA on day 12 and it struck me. These hops have been outside for months in the wind, rain and who knows what bugs may have crawled on them and where have they been? Wild yeast, germs, bacteria..why doesn't my beer get destroyed if I put this "filthy" (unsanitized)product in it?
Hops are inherently anti bacterial from what I've read and I assume the antibacterial properties are from the yellow lupulin resins, as hops also help aid in a beers shelf life
In addition to what psnydez86 said, most of the hops you buy these days are vacuum sealed then stored below freezing. Neither of those are very hospitable to microbes. If they're nitrogen packed, then that probably minimizes the risk further. Pelletizing probably isn't so good for microbes either.
Never thought of this but I'd say the risk must be low since there are so many recipes that call for dry-hopping. It's worth the risk for the flavor/aroma IMAO.
I read a book once that was written by a person with the same concern you expressed. He recommended boiling the hops for dry hopping for 2-3 minutes before adding to the beer. That said, I just dumped my hops into a sanitized bag (without boiling them) into a pale ale I am making, and lots of other folks do the same all the time with no problems.
You are also adding the hops to a beer at this point that is full of alcohol and has a lowered pH. While wort is perfect for microbes to grow in beer is not so good and probably helps to kill any bacteria that could have survived all that time frozen (which my bet would be very very few).
Which book is that? I'd like to avoid it. That would be a great way to boil away aroma compounds. Exactly.
+1. This might be an entertaining read though, if you know your processes. Can anyone direct me to a commercial brewery that boils their dry hops, or sanitizes them in anyway?
http://www.amazon.com/Concoction-beer-engineer-James-Willenbecher/dp/0963251406 I picked it up to look at the recipes, some of which are very good. Some of the other material is dated and questionable, but kudos for writing a book and getting it published...
Thanks for the (re)assurances. I guess we all knew it was safe, but since I started growing my own hops it made me think about it. What if I wanted to throw in a pound of "fresh" hops right off the vine? That would change everything, right?
Not really. Well, it would change the amount of hops you would need to use, since fresh hops (aka wet hops) are about 80% water.
I don't think anyone sanitizes hops, unless you count dropping them into an acidic solution of alcohol... I have heard of a few brewers storing them under CO2 or nitrogen before dry hopping but no comparisons to just dumping them in as received, to my knowledge. They should normally be packaged with inert gas anyway. The USDA lists hops as one of the items that are allowed to be sterilized by gamma radiation, but no one has taken them up on this, not even BMC. edit: and they are packaged under nitrogen to prevent oxidation, not out of concern for sanitation.
The ones that use whole cone hops get those in bales, and those are not protected. Sierra Nevada for example.
