Blending Fresh Hops. Options

[gunbrew]

I grew chinok hops last summer.
Have made about 8 batches of beer from them.
Do brew in a bag in a 40 ltr birko.
Usually just throw hop flowers in whole with no hop sock.
Am down to my last 40g of hop flowes sadly.
When the boil was complete I would look at the spent hop flowers and see there was still lumpin in them.
Sometimes I leave the flowers in the fermenter and other times I remove them.
Mainly I wanted that lumpin in my beer not thrown out in the spent flowers.

As an experiment 2 batches were the same grain, mash and hop additions.
1st batch the flowers were added whole.
2nd batch each hop addition had some wert added and was blended with a bamix, pulverising them to small peices like what you see in hop pellets.

Whilst both batches were good the blended hop batch came out with plenty more hop flavour.
The other advantage was no whole hop flowers to clog anything.
It seemes like blending was a good option.

Questions, Comments, Flamings?

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[DrSmurto]

Rice gulls are so yesterday.

Go lumpin! (IMG:http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/icon_chickcheers.gif)

[big78sam]

Me thinks I'll have to try this (i.e. blend hops and wort) with next year's crop. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Were you using wet or dry hops?

EDIT: speeling

This post has been edited by big78sam: Jul 30 2010, 11:34 AM

[Wolfy]

The other advantage was no whole hop flowers to clog anything.
It seemes like blending was a good option.

Questions, Comments, Flamings?

I prefer whole hop flowers for exactly the opposite reason. (IMG:http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
They are great (for my system) because they act like a filter in the bottom of the kettle, I find with hop pellets (or blended hops like you suggested) that the fine hop bits make it through the kettle filter into the CFC and fermenter, and the little bits of gunk gets everywhere, while the whole hops generally always stay in the kettle where i want them.
With my system/boil all that is left are well used and very spent hops when I've finished with them. (IMG:http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[gunbrew]

The hops were picked from the plant, fan dried for about 40 hours then air lock bagged and kept frozen in the freezer.

Spent whole hops looked well used untill I picked them appart revealing lumpin still hiding between the leaves of the hop flowers.
Cheers.

Me thinks I'll have to try this (i.e. blend hops and wort) with next year's crop. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Were you using wet or dry hops?

EDIT: speeling