Impact of freezing, thawing, refreezing on hops

[Shanna]

Hi there,

I have a fridge with a small ice box that I use for storing my hops in. Its outside in the garage and during the winter months the temperature of the garage regularly falls below 0C and as a result the compressor in the fridge never comes on. This results in the ice box in the fridge defrosting. While I store the hops in vacuum packed bags I am not entirely convinced that its a good for the quality of the hops. Has anybody else had this issue and could they advise of what the impact if any is on the hops?

Shanna

[Leann ull]

Like any green vegetation repeated freezing and unfreezing not good

[Shanna]

Like any green vegetation repeated freezing and unfreezing not good

in
Yes I am coming to that conclusion both from the poor hop aroma I am getting from my beer & also the aroma of the hops when taking them out of the freezer. Might have to sneak the hops in to the main freezer during the winter. Either that or just transfer them in to the fridge for the coldest months.

Time to bin what I have & buy some new hops

Shanma

[delzep]

Do you use a hop spider? That could be your problem (it was for me)

[Shanna]

Do you use a hop spider? That could be your problem (it was for me)

Yes I used the hop spider where as before I used the paint strainer bags. When you say it was a problem for you how did it manifest itself? I am getting loads of bitterness but no aroma. I have been recommended to add the aroma hops @80C and leave to steep for a while. Thing is I don't dry hop using the hop spider although I did use a dry hopping filter which is very similar. Going forward I am going to just dump the pellet hops in to the fermenter while the leaf hops will go in to a paint strainer bag to keep them out of the beer.

Shanna

[molc]

Get a fresh bag of hops and try the steep before changing anything else. I'm using a hop spider for all my beers and don't notice a drop in aroma or flavour. Since our setups are fairly similar,  I suspect it's a red herring.

[delzep]

I used my hop spider on maybe 3 or 4 beers and they all had very low hop aroma (even with massive amounts of late hops in a dipa) . This wasn't a problem before using the spider and hasn't been a problem since I stopped using it. The temperature is lower inside the spider which could impact the extraction of hop oils

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Extracting hop aroma and flavour is a dark art. I have just done 10g/L goldings in a 5% pale ale and the hop aroma is underwhelming.

[Qs]

If the hops don't smell great out of the bag then they wont give you lots of aroma. I wouldn't start messing with your process until you get a good smelly bag of hops going into the kettle and see if your beer ends up better first.

[Bazza]

Interesting comments re the hop spider, delzep.

I've been using one for the best part of a year now and have often wondered at the detrimental effects of the hops being squeezed together in a tight circle at a lower temp vs the old method of letting them fly around the kettle at the one temp in a strainer. Since I hardly ever brew the same thing twice I not been able to come to a conclusion.

-Barry

[mick02]

I was in search of the holy grail of a big bang of hops when I opened the bottle.

I did many many brews with Dr. Jacoby trying to get this particular characteristic and it wasn't until we got a really fresh bag of Citra that we achieved it.

The hops were sticky coming out of the bag and the result was exactly what we were looking for.

Fresh hops = great aroma. That's the secret.

[Shanna]

If the hops don't smell great out of the bag then they wont give you lots of aroma. I wouldn't start messing with your process until you get a good smelly bag of hops going into the kettle and see if your beer ends up better first.

Would tend to agree so going to start with fresh hops & if that does not sort it try without the spider after that.

Shanna