I had a great bewing day today. I was able to harvest a small amount of my cascade hops (I took 1 oz) and brewed my Fresh Hop Harvest Ale using the Cascade hops right from the vine as well as some Centennial pellets. I used Tastybrew to pull the recipe together since my recently created spreadsheet is not reliable at this moment. I was able to hit my target gravity right on the money. Below is the recipe and brewday stats.
Stats:
Water PH - 5.4
Mash PH - 5.0
Target Gravity - 1.056
OG - 1.056
Fermentables
7.5 lbs Amber Malt Liquid Extract
2 lbs. Pale two-row
.25 lbs Belgian Biscuit
.25 lbs CaraPils
.25 lbs Crystal 20L
.25 lbs Crystal 40L
Hops
.5 oz Centennial (pellet, 10.5% - 60 min)
.5 oz Cascade (fresh wet hops, 6.6% estimated - 30 min)
5 oz Cascade (fresh wet hops, 6.6% estimated - 15 min)
.5 oz Centennial (pellet, 10.5% - 5 min)
.5 oz Cascade (fresh wet hops, 6.6% estimated - Dry hop in secondary)
Yeast
Wyeast #1056 - American Ale
New Notes:
(9/2) - Primary fermentation went great. When I woke up the next morning, the bubbles were vigourusly popping. I racked to the secondary 8 days later (8/29) and added another .5 oz of fresh picked hops. Thankfully, I have another ounce or so on the vine which I'll dry and store for later use. The hop smell was amazing. Fresh cascade aroma filled the air as I racked the brew. I gave the .5 oz that I was dry hopping with a big squeze and rub to release some more aroma and dropped them in. I'm getting very excited about this beer.
(9/15) - I bottled this yesterday. When I uncovered the carboy to bottle, it had an interesting white film on the top of the beer. It tasted fine as I sipped the hydrometer sample (1.012) so I'm not too concerned. Hopefully the hops didn't have a bacteria on them when I dry hopped. Anyone have any experience with this or have seen this film on their beer before?
(10/6) - Bad news.....I tried the first bottle and it is completly ruined! It tastes like vinager so I'm going to jhave to dump them all. I'm am not happy. I guess thats the risk you run with fresh hops....lots of bacteria on them. Next year I will make sure that I boil them all and not dry hop with them. I had real high hopes for this one....oh well!!!
Cheers,
Jason
8 comments:
That sucks. The only dry hopping with fresh hops I did was a high ABV beer. I didn't do anything special with the hops.
I wonder if the high ABV helped.
Yeah, I have no clue what happened. I boiled some as well, but the dry hoping did it i think. there was definitely bacteria on them. Oh well, I have two great beers going now. It happens I guess.
Glad I read this. I just started growing hops, but I live in Yakima, so I expect good things. I planned on entering an IPA in the fresh hop contest here using a friends hops. Now I'm thinking amber. Any thoughts on that. Also, seems like you used a pretty small amount of hops, considering the water weight. Too bad it didn't turn out so you could tell us about how the recipe turned out.
Well, Yakima is a great hop growing region, so I'm sure you have some good resources to grow hops!! I think with the fresh hops, an IPA might be more appropriate but ultimately it's up to you which style you think would work better with your hops. Since you have a good amount of time before they'll be ready to harvest, maybe you could do a test batch of each with the correct hops and see which you like better. then just switch the dried hops with your fresh hops when they're ready.
I was a little bummed, but I'm going to do the same recipe this year and see how it comes out. I agree that considering the "wet" weight, I didn't use much but unfortunately I don't have an idea of how that turned out. Hopefully I can find something online that talks about wet hops and the weight comparison to dry hops. if you come across something, definitely pass it on!
Cheers,
Jason
The ratio is something like 1 to 10 I think.
1 to 10 oz? 1 dry to 10 wet?
I used 5 oz of fresh hops in the secondary for this batch and found little sacks of lupilin floating around in the bottom of the glass when I poured a pint from the tap. It was a great beer, but, a bit extreme ;-)
Here's a post of our 2007 hop harvest. Here's the dry hop yield. I was a little off ooops. Our ratio was 4 to 1. Wet to dry. I've read that it can be more though.
Uhh... Here's the dry hop yield.
Forgot the link :-O
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