Wet hopped, green hopped, fresh hopped, harvest - call it what you like, there's something quite exciting about brewing with hops that have just been plucked from their bines having grown through the summer. The majority of hops are rushed from bine to kiln as quickly as possible, in order to preserve their precious aroma and flavour laden oils before they start to deteriorate. Some are packaged as dried leaf and others are crushed and pelletised. The hops are then vacuum packed in light resistant packaging and kept cool to retain their freshness. Here in the UK, hop harvesting season is typically mid to late September but of course knowing when to harvest is crucial and the farmer will be checking the crop constantly as harvest time approaches, in order to catch the hops as they reach peak condition.
Cascade ready to harvest |
Several varieties of hops can be grown quite readily in the UK and are often found growing wild. At work, we recently volunteered to help out with some groundskeeping at a local church and community centre. One of the tasks I undertook was to cull some wild hop bines that were taking over a wire fence, having intertwined themselves along a good five metres of it. For a home brewer, chopping and bagging up those bines for composting was torture! Had I known that I'd have access to so many lovely hops, I would've lined a brew up that very evening. I did contemplate heading back over to see if any had grown outside of the church's boundary but as it turns out, a chance to brew with wet hops would present itself on twitter.
Baron Orm, beer rater extraordinaire over on his blog, had a bumper crop of Cascade looking for a willing brewer who would be prepared to send him some of the resultant beer for sampling. My services were duly offered and arrangements made for posting the hops down post-harvest. Ideally, wet hops should be brewed with as soon as possible but I'd spoken to other home brewers who'd kept them cold/frozen for a while and still got good results. The hops were posted soon after harvesting and arrived at my door within a couple of days, still cold in ziplock bags and were immediately dispatched to the freezer while I planned a recipe and waited for brew day to roll around.
The Baron looking very happy with his bumper crop |
The first thing I read about brewing with wet hops was that, by weight, you need to use around six times the quantity you would of the equivalent dried or pelletised hop because the moisture still locked inside makes the cones heavier. UK cascade hops usually come in at around 6% alpha acid. Of course, I had no way of knowing the amount of alpha acid these hops contained so just assumed they'd be around that. When constructing my recipe, I divided the alpha acid by 6 to take that into account. I wanted to brew a pale ale that would allow the hops to shine, so constructed a very simple recipe:
The malt bill is mostly Maris Otter with a small percentage of carapils and crystal malts for body and a touch of colour and sweetness. I used dried Cascade for bittering then added the wet hops late on - as many as I could squeeze into the kettle. The resultant wort certainly had plenty of aroma so I'm hopeful that I managed to impart plenty of hop character from the Baron's garden harvest. The yeast is a new one to me but one I've read imparts a nice fruity character to add a little something to the finished beer, which has a predicted 4.8% ABV and 32 IBUs.