Shredding Hop Cones

Some folks will refer to bitterness using adjectives like "harsh" or "smooth". I am not certain what Dr. Narziss meant with respect to the words "not so fine" but the thought of "harsh" came to my mind.

Hopefully some of the tagged folks will get a chance to contribute to this thread's discussion.

Cheers!

 

I am trying to find the original German text so I can see what "not as fine" (an extremely vague phrase in English) is a translation of. Initially, my thoughts are that he means it the bitterness might be more harsh, but I will need some more time to consult the original to have a better idea.

 

definitely learning a bunch here, personally no experience, but you may lose a decent amount of glands in the shredding process if hand shredding. On the otherhand, I would definitely be concerned with putting the cones in a food processor/blender just due to heat...but if you were to add cold wort that should offset any temp spike. Otherwise, seems to make sense to me...would be more useful with wet hops, dried hop cones seem to more suited to open up their glands.

 

I would actually think that it would be caused to more polyphenol extraction and other plant material from the pulverized cones...but not sure.

 

Dave,

My initial reaction to your post was: creating more 'green material' could be a problem.

Upon further reflection I thought: but wouldn't whatever 'effects' created by shredding whole hops also occur when producing pellet hops?

Hmmm?

Cheers!

Edit: Maybe the difference is that the pellet production process mitigates exposure to air (oxygen) and minimizes oxidation effects?

 

Here is a brief read about modern hop processing and it mentions hop crushing too:
Hop Crushing
Use a hammer mill to reduce the size of dried hops even further. Get the pieces as small as possible without turning it into dust. The hammer mill consists of feeding hopper, crushing chamber and delivery device. Its key parts are inner roasting rotors fixed with hammers. Hops are swallowed and crushed by rotating hammers in a high speed. With continuous hitting force from hammers, hops break into small particles until small enough to pass screen holes. Large particles need to be re-crushed for a better grinding. After crushing, hop particles are uniform and with proper moisture content to meet further processing. For small scale hop crushing, there are two kinds of hammer mills for choice: diesel driven hammer mills ans electricity driven hammer mills.

Yeah...not so sure about the polyphenol factor here...but wonder if there are differences between "green" hops and dried hops and the levels of various plant materials.

 

So how are hops pelletized without any heat involved? Run through the grinder/hammer mill at cold temps?

 

Yes, some pellet machines are nitrogen cooled to ensure that the hop pellets are not exposed to excess heat during the pellet production process.

Cheers!

 

That's awesome! I know Matt at Firestone Walker has employed this technique for beers that they dry hop with whole cone hops - if I recall correctly they actually used/use a meat grinder to "masticate" the cones before use.

I've recently started researching this at AB - looking at a way to make a dry hop material in large quantities that is neither a pellet nor a whole cone but has the advantages of both and will allow for a lower dosage to achieve the same aroma quality (as they allude to in your citation above) in order to reduce the beer loss associated with dry hopping.

 

The bitterness quality differences are due entirely to increased polyphenol and oxidized alpha/beta (humulinone and hulupone) extraction. There is not consensus on this, however - people sense these compounds differently depending on their bitterness receptors - some report them as "harsh" and others do not agree. Recall that the main source of bitterness in beer is isomerized alpha acids; iso-humulone, iso-adhumulone, and iso-cohumulone. However, (some) polyphenols are quite bitter, and if you dry hop you usually extract another 100-300 parts per million of various polyphenols into your beer. That will add 5-10% more bitterness, and those compounds bind to/interact with an entirely different subset of bitterness receptors. There's a lot of genetic diversity around these receptors. You also extract humulinone and hulupone as I mentioned above, and humulinone is extremely similar to the iso-alpha acids (having just an additional hydroxyl group) and interacts with the same bitterness receptor, just a little more weakly (it is about 50-60% as bitter as iso-alpha). I've measured dry hopped beers with anywhere from 0.5-30 parts per million of humulinone - this means in some beers the oxidized alphas were actually present in greater amounts than the regular iso-alpha!

Dr. Tom Shellhammer's brewing science lab at Oregon State has been actively investigating this very subject for about two years now, and the upcoming July ASBC meeting will contain extensive presentations on bitterness quality as it relates to dry hopping and the various compounds involved. I suspect we'll have more solid information in a couple of months!

 

would this be better then the whole cones for dry hopping in the keg? I was going to use my ninja blender on pulse

 

No...use a fine mesh nylon bag and whole cone hops

 

Putting hops through a blender will just knock all the good stuff out of them and it will stick to the blender. Stick with whole hops, it's easier to use if you get a bag to put them in.