National Homebrew Club Ireland

 Can this happen.  I grew my own hops.  Dried and frozen.  Added 50g to my kit after 3 days in primary.   I know there is little bugs, stocks and stems and pollutants from the great out doors. Yet I am seeing no sign  of infections. yet.   Makes me wonder why a sanitized  everything  else.   

Are you sure you have an infection? What off flavours are you getting
How long ago did you DH?,  to get hops properly dried is a pig how did you do it?
unlikely but not impossible infection came from your hops
Home grown hops best used in boil.

Hops are a natural preservative, which is (too) one of the reasons we use them in beer. Bugs and other nasties on them will likely not end up in your beer, in particular if there's already a little bit of alcohol in it to further reduce their chance of survival.
Drying the hops should (depending on how you did it) help having got rid of the bulk too...

In general though, younare always taking a big bet by not sanitising something that gets in touch with the fermenting beer. So be careful ;)

Sorry . Predictive text changed the way I typed the tittle.  I don't have any infections in my bucket .   Yet.
I know there are dead black and green fly in the hops as they were present during  harvest. Even after I used an organic home made pesticide.  Some survive.  I also know some cones touched  the dirty ground  .    I could imagine  commercial  hop growers  have the same things stuck to their products.
What is in the make up of hop cones that protects the beer from infections?   

Commercial growers don't have beasts in their cones
They use sprays like you but perform a whole lot of knocking and shaking before they get to the drier.
Define homemade pesticide? That may have an impact on your beer, I am guessing some sort of lemon based spray.
If your cones have livestock in them only use them for the boil and use any of the readily available hops from The HBS for DH'ing
I know it's great fun and has huge novelty value but I don't grow hops, even though I was on Ear to the Ground, picking them.
We don't have the climate and certainly not where I live and the yields are poor, unless you have them in a tunnel. greedy and thirsty feckers too, you also have to guess IBU.

My fear of tasting the garlic and lemon pesticide stopped me spraying for the last month.  I may look into other methods for future  grows.  I had a bumper crop . Perfectly formed and bred for our climate.  I'm sure the same plants will be back in force next spring.
I dry hopped  a coppers  english bitter kit with the same hops with success  last batch.  I now have twice  as much in a Woodfords wherry twin tin kit. It should  be nice.  If it survives  the hack

Don't get me wrong I'm not having a go at folks that grow their own hops I think it's great crack and there is certainly an element of "I grew that"
But in spite of historical commercial attempts with English Varieties in Kilkenny and Golden Vale we just don't have the climate on a yearly consistent basis to allow the flowers generate sufficient oil by comparison to our UK German or Czech colleagues. They can't grow barley as well as us though ;)

Quote from: CH on January 03, 2016, 09:10:09 PM
But in spite of historical commercial attempts with English Varieties in Kilkenny and Golden Vale we just don't have the climate on a yearly consistent basis to allow the flowers generate sufficient oil by comparison to our UK German or Czech colleagues. They can't grow barley as well as us though ;)

Here on Manchans TV show Déanta in Éirinn they say there was a substantial operation in Ireland:  https://youtu.be/hr9MpwSvNIM?t=1357

Was it not the case that there wasn't the capital to mechanise or modernise especially given the dominance of one brewer on the market easily able to import??

Rob of Highbank Orchards, a lovely organic cider producer in Kilkenny gave me first hand what happened with his Dad who was one of 5 hops growers in early 60's. It's not for a public forum without his permission but if you ever meet up with him ask about hops at his farm.
G wasn't the only game in town btw there were also 2 breweries in Cork which had significant requirements although not on the same scale obviously ;)
The records for Murphys in UCC make interesting reading viz their overseas supply particularly during WW2 where priority was given to breweries supplying the troops and American hops were pretty much non existent because of the great job the U boats were doing.
What was interesting was the age of some of the hops they had to use all before vac packing and commercial chilling as is done today.

The fact remains however our climate is not sufficiently warm enough in the Summer months to allow a consistent crop with a high enough oil content to compete with UK or the rest of Europe for the staples of EKG Fuggles and or Saaz.

There are of course a few of what I call "novelty" growers like Wicklow Wolf, White Gypsy and Dunbrody and Rupert in Cork next year but all are using wet hops in their beer as yes there is significant capital investment in harvesting and processing and why would you if your harvest was going to be hit and miss.
The NHC should have a hop growing competition where you enter your best varieties and we have them commercially analysed.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more commercial messing about with more historical bittering agents like bog myrtle!
No doubt one of the Prome Brewers (Home Brewers gone pro) reading this will have a go next year!
I know one of the GCB boys did one last year.