Today is my first brewday in three years and I am using hops purchased in 2015. I used Promash to calculate the IBU loss in my hops. My recipe (Double Sunshine IPA) originally calls for 1 OZ Columbus for bittering but the Promash adjustment calls for me to increase it to 6 OZ. Does that sound right?
I would advise you to get new hops. Putting in the effort to brew a whole batch, only to be disappointed because of lackluster (or worse) hops, is a very bad experience. Spending $10 or $15 to avoid it seems well worth it, especially when you consider the money you are putting into fresh grain etc.
Even if they were old there is no way u would need 6 times the amount. Agree with mindbender, get new hops. Firm believer in the GIGO model to success ( Good In Good Out)
Yes, I thought about that but I figured I would consider today a possible throw away. I have 5 pounds of new hops coming in next week. I had brewed for 10 years pr[or to my 3 year hiatus and I had used 2 year old hops plenty of times but never pushed the envelope to 3 years. BTW, the 3 year old hops were still in the vac packs and kept frozen the entire time.
If you really must go against advice than treat them as losing alpha acid 10 percent per year. Smell them, If they smell okay the greater your chance of success.
Something doesn’t seem right in the pro-mash prediction. The times I bothered to run that part of the program, the amount of AA loss was small.
Thanks everyone. I will adjust my hops slightly and see how it goes. The hops smelled great when I cut the bag open.
You should have to use about double the hops. This chart is from The Fundamentals of Beer and Hop Chemistry: 0 68.00% 32.00% 100.00% 3 65.68% 26.91% 92.59% 6 63.45% 22.63% 86.07% 9 61.29% 19.03% 80.31% 12 59.20% 16.00% 75.20% 15 57.18% 13.45% 70.64% 18 55.23% 11.31% 66.55% 21 53.35% 9.51% 62.87% 24 51.53% 8.00% 59.53% 30 48.08% 5.66% 53.74% 36 44.86% 4.00% 48.86% 48 39.06% 2.00% 41.06% 60 34.00% 1.00% 35.00%
As long as you kept them how you detailed, there's absolutely no reason that you can't use them with excellent results. Just make the adjustment with your bittering additions and you'll be golden. Just keep in mind that late kettle/whirlpool additions and dry hopping amounts aren't affected by this degradation.
On the Con side, Columbus is reported to have "Very Poor" storage according to the book Hops by Heironymus. And that info is almost certainly an industry consensus. On the Pro side, hops are harvested once a year but they are packaged extremely well these days. My opinion is if you are using them for bittering only and they have been kept cold, or better yet frozen, go ahead. If you want aroma, don't get your hopes up too much. Lastly, try not let the software dictate your brewing technique. It is meant to be a guidance and good brew software can be a powerful tool to calculate many variables, but the software does not know your system, your likes and it certainly doesn't drink your beer. Use these hops and you'll get valuable brew experience for the next time. Cheers.
