Autumn is quickly approaching and home gardens all around are putting out some of their final bounties for the season. If you have a hop yard, your hops are probably about ready to pick.
We’ve been growing hops for more than five years now and we normally pick, dry, and freeze our hop harvests.
This year, we did something different and chose to harvest the cones straight from bines and put them straight into the brew kettle.
Here’s our Homegrown Wet Hops Home Brewing Session Video!
Or is it a fresh hop home brewing session video?
We don’t attempt to settle the debate about terminology. But to be clear about this project, we are using homegrown, newly picked and un-dried hops. The varieties include:
- Mt. Hood
- Magnum
- Chinook
- Cascade
We were fortunate to get a great day to pick hops and brew beer at the same time. We’ve sampled a few “wet” hop brews from commercial sources in the past (Sierra Nevada comes to mind) but we’ve never brewed one.
After many years of experience brewing with our own homegrown hops for aroma, flavor and YES, even bittering (THE HORROR!); we finally chose to forgo the drying process and went straight to kettle with the fresh/wet hops.
Why you say?!?
Well, why not – That’s what home brewing is all about.
We approached this brew with a simple, one malt grist. The recipe only has all floor-malted Maris Otter
Floor malted so you know it’s got to be good.
When we tasted the wort, it was really good. The extreme biscuit and dried white cracker like flavors shined through.
It was so good….but enough about that, this brew was all about the hops.
Our approach was pretty straight forward. We employed First Wort Hopping…because we could, for whatever that’s worth. Then, we dumped in nearly the entire harvest for a 30 minute hop stand at flame out.
What we were going for was a mildly bitter brew with a big fresh hop (wet hop?) aroma and flavor profile.
I think we’ve hit a winner here.
Stay tuned for a few weeks from now when we finally get to drink this Wet Hop Ale.
Next week, we’ll talk with John’s brother Jim about some of his hop growing tips and tricks.
Cheers and
BREW ON!
Lauren
I always wanted to try this, right from the vine to the brew, great idea, and somthing that really can’t be replicated on a commercial or even a micro brew level. Only homebrewers with growing hops can do this. I’m sure it will be great.
Like the idea of no specialty malts in it too.
John
Thanks for the comment, Lauren. We’ll see if the brew lives up to the plan. There will be a tasting video posted in 2 weeks.
Mike
Great video. Thank you for sharing
John
Thanks for the comment. Appreciate the kind words.