Beer Forum

I have about 1-2 lbs of fresh cascade hops from my first year plant. I have never used fresh hops and wondering if anyone has a killer recipe for me. I have never made my own recipe cause it still scares the shit out of me. Plus I haven't brewed in several month planning my wedding so I am a little out of my routine.
I'm an all grain batch sparger.

Cheers,
Megan

megDC wrote:I have about 1-2 lbs of fresh cascade hops from my first year plant. I have never used fresh hops and wondering if anyone has a killer recipe for me. I have never made my own recipe cause it still scares the shit out of me. Plus I haven't brewed in several month planning my wedding so I am a little out of my routine.
I'm an all grain batch sparger.

Cheers,
Megan

I haven't done it, but here are some ideas:
http://byo.com/stories/item/419-can-i-use-freshly-harvested-hops-for-brewing-or-do-i-have-to-dry-them-out-first
http://www.speakbeer.com/wet-hop-ipa-recipe/
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/09/wet-hopped-pale-ale-recipe.html

With fresh hops, use them at the very end. The 'goal' is to get aromatics from them that are normally driven off during drying and processing. You also don't know what sort of alphas you have, so relying on them for IBUs is gonna be guesswork.

You need to define wet and fresh.

Wet are off the bine, into the boil.
Fresh are this years crop dried and processed

If wet go 5 times the weight when compared to pellets
If fresh go 2-3 times the weight when compared to pellets
Your second batch you can adjust for fresh hop IBU to your taste
If you are off what is wrong with either an IPA or a PA?
It is a win-win brew!

Enjoy your wedding.....Have you thought of a brewing honeymoon?

gwk453 wrote:You need to define wet and fresh.

Wet are off the bine, into the boil.
Fresh are this years crop dried and processed

If wet go 5 times the weight when compared to pellets
If fresh go 2-3 times the weight when compared to pellets
Your second batch you can adjust for fresh hop IBU to your taste
If you are off what is wrong with either an IPA or a PA?
It is a win-win brew!

Enjoy your wedding.....Have you thought of a brewing honeymoon?

gwk is right on, but to reiterate what he said for clarity:

if wet, use 5 oz of the wet hop for every oz in the original recipe.
if fresh, use 2 to 3 oz of the fresh hop for every oz in the original recipe.

As also was alluded, you have no idea of the actual alpha acid levels.
Water weight is the largest component of wet hops -- approx. 80% hence
the 5:1 ratio. Therefore, it is best to assume they are on the lower end
of their alpha scale and also assume you can't dry them out as quite as
well as the pros can, so you fudge it to 2 to 3 times as much by weight.

Once you brew with them, you can tweak the amounts to dial in from there.

HTH-

gwk453 wrote:Enjoy your wedding.....Have you thought of a brewing honeymoon?

We went to Iceland and road tripped around the ring road. Its not the beer capital of the world, but they are coming on slow since their prohibition ended in 1989. On the plane they offered their version of yellow fizzy stuff, Egill Gull. At the Duty Free (which we highly recommend buying booze cause its expensive elsewhere) we bought Brugghúsið Borg's Snorri NR 10 for nights at the hotel. Unless you are in Reykjavik, the bar scene is nonexistent. Hit up the Micro Bar in Rekjaviyk and had Olvisholt Brugghus Lava RIS, Íslenskur úrvals Pils Organic, Gæðingur Humalína IPA, Gæðingur Pale Ale - 4 beers costs you about $40! In Akureryri, we went to Brugghúsbarinn. They only have beer from Kaldi Brewery. We tried their wheat beer made only for this bar Kaldi Dark lager. We also stopped at Rauda Husid (Red House) for dinner in Eyrarbakki on a recommendation from the brewer at Olvisholt. The brewery is close to this restaurant and carry all his beers. We sipped on Skjálfti- lager and Mori- red ale.

Also brought a bottle of Brennivín home... Black Death.

Cheers