So, picture it. It’s January and I am going through my usual scrolling of social media accounts. Within those feeds, I am seeing advertisements from multiple companies selling hop beverages that are not beer. I wondered if they could be made at home. After some research, I created a couple of beverages for Mike and I try and discuss on camera. Here’s our video about hop waters and teas.
How To Make A Hop Water At Home
Ok, the first beverage we tried was a simple carbonated water that was hopped with LUPOMAX Mosiac hops. Here’s the processed I followed to make it.
- Collected .75 gallons (2.8 L) of water into a pot. Heated the water on my stove top to a boil and held it there for 10 minutes.
- Cooled the water to 170°F / 77°C.
- Once the water was cooled, I added 1 gram on LUPOMAX Mosiac hops. If you’re using regular pellets, you can up the dose to 1.5 grams. It seems like a little bit but trust us. It will come out great.
- Add a squirt of lemon juice concentrate to the water to drop the pH and aid the flavor of the hops.
- Steep the hops in the water for 20 minutes. I let it cool to room temperature by putting it outside with a lid (It’s cold here in January) and out of the sunlight.
- After it was chilled, I added it to my UKeg through a funnel with a coffee filter in it. After it was filled, I capped it and carbonated it with the cartridge system of the UKeg.
We liked this beverage a lot. It tasted refreshing cold and the LUPOMAX Mosiac hops tasted great.
How To Make A Carbonated Hopped Tea
For this beverage, I took a recipe from a viewer on YouTube and altered it a bit. I’m going to write how I did it and how I would do it better next time.
- I heated 1 liter of water to 160° F / 71° C and added it to a French Press.
- I added 20 grams of Citra hops to steep in that water for 10 minutes.
- At the five minute mark, I added 1 tea bag of Scottish Breakfast Tea, opening its contents and sprinkling the leaves in.
- After the steep of both hops and tea was over, I added 60 grams of table sugar to the press and mixed it around until it was dissolved.
- I added this mixture to two swing cap bottles and filled them up halfway. Using plain seltzer water, I filled the bottles to the top and closed them up.
Mike didn’t like this one. I think he wanted more tea than hops – and this drink had a lot of hops flavor even though it was diluted with seltzer water.
Next time: I will make a batch the size of the hop water and bring down the amount of hops to a gram or two. Then, get some high quality tea and add the equivalent of two bags to the water. I think that’s where the sweet spot is.
You Can Do It!
Making alternative hopped beverages at home is easy. You can do it if you try. This post should act as a starting point for you to make your own hop water or tea at home.
BREW ON!
J
I’m just getting into hop tea after finding that the hops in IPA really help my chronic neck pain. So instead of drinking beers every morning I figure I’d give tea a shot. I boiled about 4 cups of water with 4 teaspoons of hops in an infuser. I added sugar but it’s definitely too weak. After some research, I should be adding more like 4-6 tsp for the same hop quality as a DIPA. And next time, I’ll add a separate tea, maybe a fruity blend to jazz it up. Thanks for the post!
John
Hi J – thanks for the comment!
Tyson
Question about the hop ratios between the two recipes. In recipe one, you use 1g of hops to 2.8 L of water, but then in recipe two, you use 20g of hops to 1 L of water. Were you using two different hop products that add flavor in different ways? I am trying to come to a ratio to use for a small batch of hop water that I will carbonate on demand in a SodaStream when I want a glass.
John
Yes, the first recipe I was using a concentrated hop pellet product called Lupomax. It’s stronger than regular pellets. If you are using what they call T-90 or regular hop pellets, use the second recipe’s amount instead.