Fresh Hop Aroma Tea

A "tea" made with fresh hops and nearly finished wort.

In the Best of Brew Your Own - Hop Lover's Guide, Chris Colby & Don Million have an article on fermenting & conditioning that describes making a hop aroma tea in place of dry hopping or kraüsen hopping. The resulting "tea" is supposed to contribute a more intense hop aroma and flavor than dry hopping would, with no bitterness, since the hops do not boil. One would normally use the hop aroma tea technique during secondary fermentation. But with about 5 oz of fresh hops left over from my one pound order, a tea should be a good way to capture as much aroma and flavor as possible before the hops begin to fade.

Here are the steps to making a hop aroma tea:

1. Normally you would make 2 qts. of wort, SG 1.005 - 1.015 for a 5 gallon batch. In my case, I tapped boiling wort directly from the brew kettle with 10 minutes left in the boil. I ran the wort into a sanitized French press coffee maker filled with fresh hops.
2. Normally you would let the hops steep, then press and let cool before adding to a beer in secondary fermentation. In my case, I let the cones steep the remaining 10 minutes of the main boil, then pressed and poured into the brew kettle at flameout.

Brewing With Fresh Hops - Chinook IPA

Just in time for the arrival of my freshly picked pound bag of Chinook hops at Mountain Homebrew & Wine, I found a reasonable sounding recipe in the iBrewMaster App for a single  hop Chinook IPA.

Each Chinook cone was about the size of one of my thumbs. The bag wafted intense piney/resiny aromas. 

The product description for the beer comes from a Northern Brewer kit:

"This American IPA has a relatively modest gravity and an immodest hop character derived entirely from a single hop variety. Chinook hops have long been used by US brewers for bittering additions, but their intense aroma and flavor have caught on only recently. This kit is a bit lower in gravity and lighter in body than our other IPA recipes, which enhances the perceived bitterness and reduces the aging requirements. It shows up in the glass with a reddish-gold color and a thick, resinous Chinook aroma that lingers after the glass is emptied."

In order to have the freshest possible ingredients for this special seasonal brew, I gathered and milled the grains at the shop as I picked up the fresh hop order. I also had a left over half-pound of flaked rye from my HOTD Blue Dot clone, so I thought, might as well add that to the mix to balance out some extra IBUs I plan to introduce.

The general guideline for fresh hops is to use 5X the amount called for from a dried hop recipe. Remembering Black Raven's fresh hop IPA from last year, the beer should end up with a more subtle hop character than if dried hops had been used.

60 minute bittering hop addition.

I also snipped off my dozen or so home grown Cascade hop cones and threw them in as a first wort addition. Not much of a bitterness addition, but they are ready to harvest.

Total weight of my Cascade Hop crop: .5 oz.

The fresh hop cones held together really well through the boil. Racking to the fermenter was a much faster and easier task than with dried hops. The cones also seemed to absorb less water than I expected. After a 60 minute boil that started with 6 gallons, I was only about a quart off from a 5 gallon final wort.

Rainbow sheen of fresh hop lupulin oils at cold break.

My altered recipe for Chinook IPA:

10 lbs Organic 2 - row Briess Malt 1.8L

.75 lb Carapils malt 1.3L

.25 lb Crystal 120 deg L Briess Malt

.50 lb Flaked organic rye

Mash: 16.5 quarts water @ 152 ºF for 60 minutes.

2 tsp's Burton Water Salts in mash water
2 tsp's Gypsum in mash water

Mashout: Heat to 170 ºF over 2 minutes, rest 10 minutes.

Sparge 6 gallons from 170 ºF Hot Liquor.

Hops

.50 oz Cascade First Wort Boil

3.75 oz  35.02 IBU's Chinook fresh hops 60 mins

2.50 oz  8.47 IBU's Chinook fresh hops 20 mins

2.50 oz  8.47 IBU's Chinook fresh hops 10 mins

2.50 oz  1.01 IBU's Chinook fresh hops 1 mins

5.00 oz  0.00 IBUs Chinook fresh hop tea

1.0 oz      0.00 IBUs Chinook whole dry hop 7 days during secondary

Fermentation Steps
Primary 14 days @ 66.0°F
Secondary 14 days @ 72.0°F
Bottle/Keg 14 days @ 74.0°F

Carbonation Taste Test: Wild Red Velvet

After one week in the bottle, WRV has good carbonation and a rich red color.

A reasonably lasting head at week one, but I believe I detect acetaldehyde in the nose. 

Opened a bottle of my Wild Red Velvet experiment after one week at room temperature to see how the carbonation is coming along. During cold crash, I had let the fermentor go to 28 ºF for a day, which formed ice crystals in the top half of the wort. (Now I know how to make an eisbock one day.) I worried the cold might have killed the yeast before carbonation, but it has held up fine.

Looking back over my texts to Sean describing tasting impressions:

• Rich red color. Still a bit hazy.
• Strange but enticing funky aroma. Couldn't quite place it at first. Eventually settled on the seeds from papaya. That rich, tropical, musky aroma. Likely acetaldehyde, which results from incomplete yeast activity. Should diminish with further conditioning. 
• Creamy mouthfeel. Very drinkable. Slightly tart caramel. LIke a candied Granny Smith apple.
• Well hidden alcohol.
• By week two, the papaya seed aroma is fading, and the beer is taking on a drier character. The oak is starting to come through. 
• Beginning to think about what WRV would taste like with a further inoculation of brettanomyces to bring in a more recognizable funk. 

The lactobacillus funk is similar to a mild French soft cheese in some respects. I enjoy it, but I also hope it changes as the beer conditions in the bottle. The closest approximation I have to compare it to is BFM Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien 2007. I really can't wait to see how this one conditions.