Distilling hop oils

[spook100]

Does anyone have any experience distilling hop oils? I have come into possesion of a little 4 litre air still and was thinking that I could add a bunch of hops to it, fill it up with water and extract the hop oils. I would think think that the more volatile aroma compounds would come off first, followed by the flavour compounds and finally the bitter stuff. I you were to cut the product, as distillers do, by collecting in a series of small containers then you could blend them together to get a taste/arome balance that you like and use it in place of dry hopping. Any thoughts?

[MashBag]

Yes and no.

I have started using vodka to extract the hop oils. Did it once to improve a mistske. JUST done a proper brew with this instead of flame out hopstand.

[MashBag]

A quick Google reveals we are not the first.

[spook100]

Never thought to Googe it, there even seem to be commercial hops oils that are intended for dry hopping so at least it is not an untrodden path. The oils must be very potent -recommmneded dosage 1ml per 5 galons (US).I think I'll throw some old hops from the freezer into the still and see what happens.

[MashBag]

I have a glut of Ernest at the moment. Will have a go after my vodka hopping had been tasted.

According to Sierra navada it works for green hops. Now there is a good idea, might save the pita job of drying them.

[spook100]

I gave this a go last night and would call it a partial success. I add 10g of old target hop pellets from the back of the freezer to 500ml water and collected the first 300ml of distillate in 3x100mm containers.

The oil extract volume was very small - just a film on top of the water. It is very strong though with the whole house smelling of hops for hours afterwards.

I can't say there was a massive difference between the cuts although the last one was a bit more bitter smelling than the others. However, the sagey/herbal aromas of the target hops were so dominant that it was difficult to get past them and identify other flavours.

I poured out a couple of small glasses of light lager, shook up one of the containers and added a few drops to one of the glasses. The hop flavour came through strongly both in flavour and aroma. Again, though, the sagey flavour was very dominant.

I suspect that the hop variety, age and mechanics of pelletising them resulted in some of the more volatile oils being lost long ago. The result was a bit one-dimensional. I will try this again with fresher, more fruity leaf hop variety and see if that works any better. I don't have access to green hops so will leave that to Mash.

[MashBag]

Could you suspend the hops in the steam, you would get a more delicate extract, possibly rather than boiling them?

Google reckons that's how they make gin?