AG#91 - Green Hop Home-Grown

[WishboneBrewery]

Green Hop Home-Grown OK this was almost an impromptu brewday, I tossed a fair few ideas around before coming to my senses and sticking to the program... These hops were picked and Vac-packed / frozen back in early September and its high time I got them used.
So... this is hopefully a solidly English Bitter, no frills, no in yer-face American hops, a good dash of sweet toffee-like Crystal malts, using a single addition of Goldings for the bittering.

Fermentables:
Lager Malt - 70%
Wheat Malt - 20%
Caramalt - 5%
Crystal Malt - 2%
Amber Malt - 2%
Crystal Malt, ExtraDark - 1%

Regular Dried Hops:
Golding - 5.1 % @ 60 mins - 74g

Green Hops:
Mix of Fuggles & Challenger 520g @ 10mins
Mix of Fuggles & Challenger 520g @ 5mins

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 37 EBU
Colour: 17 EBC

The Vacuum packed and frozen hops from back http://wp.me/pJKR-qZ here:

Trying some Crisps Maltings Lager Malt:

The malts:

First Wort Goldings Hops:

Other than being a bit squashed, these look and smell just as they did before I packed 'em:

In go the 10min Green Hops:

Protafloc plopped @ 10mins, break material settling out nicely:

Some rather clear wort running to the FV:

Used a bit of the wort to wake up some Brettanomyces, Whitelabs WLP 650, for doing a secondary ferment of whatever I brew on New Years Day:

AG#91 - Green Hopped Home-grown by pdtnc, on Flickr

All in all a pretty easy brewday, not the earliest start but it is my only 'lazy' day this week!
I keep forgetting to take a Hydrometer shot, but rest assured it was 1049 and I liquored back 1.7L to 1045, ending up with 21.5L in the FV.
There were some pretty vegetative smells coming from the copper with over 1kg of Green Hops going in but the wort ended up tasting solidly like it had been hopped with Fuggles & Challenger rather than Lettuce and Sprouts!

[chivelegs]

Over a kilo of hops! Bravo Sir.
Just a question though, can a green-hopped beer be made so long after harvesting?

[WishboneBrewery]

Over 1kg of Wet hops is probably only 100g of equivalent dry.
When I picked them green I Vacuum packed them and put them in the freezer, so when I opened them today they were still very much like they were when picked... just a bit squashed

[boingy]

I assume 4 to 5 times the weight for wet hops but it ain't a precise art.

Earlier I checked on my first batch to use frozen "wet" hops, a simple 90% pale, 10% crystal hopped only with home grown Prima Dona (=First Gold). It's just reached end gravity and is smelling and tasting pretty good. Perhaps a tad harsh on the bitterness but it's early days. It will get a couple more days at 19C then 4 or 5 more at about 3C.

So I reckon freezing 'em straight off the bine is fine.

[WishboneBrewery]

thats good to know, did yours smell a bit Veg-like in the copper?

[boingy]

thats good to know, did yours smell a bit Veg-like in the copper?

No, they looked and smelled normal. I didn't know whether to allow for a different absorption rate but in the end I got my usual quantity into the FV at the expected OG so it was fine. I have another two wet hop brews to go. One Cascade and another Prima Dona. Not sure of the recipes yet. One thing I will definitely do next harvest time is let the hops sit for longer after picking to allow more insects to escape. I don't know what % of commercial dried hops is insect parts but I do know there were definitely a few bugs in my frozen packages. I picked the obvious ones out but there will still have been a fair few that ended up in the copper. Maybe I'll keep a few bottles aside for any veggie friends that come round...

[Manx Guy]

Hi

This beer looks good!

I did my green hop brew last month and first sample seems promising...
Brew day post is here
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=55316
I didn't use as many hops and added a amount of NB to get it in the right bitterness range instead of brewing a lower gravity beer like I did last year...

Cheers!

Guy