The Hop-Shot

Last night I bottled the Belgian IPA. For a few of the bottles, however, I tried something a little different.

I've been reading around about hop tea, and the added hop flavor that it can add to your beer. There's not a ton of information out there on the subject, but it's basically how it sounds. You steep hops in hot water to extract some flavor from the hops. Supposedly, this adds quite a bit of flavor and aroma, but since there is no boiling involved, no alpha acids are isomerized. So, no bitterness should be added to the tea.

Well, I decided to take this a wee step further. Instead of simply steeping the hops, or put them in a coffee maker, I threw some in my espresso maker. I figured, with the heat, and added pressure, there may be a bit more flavor drawn out. This created some fairly potent hop tea. I added about 4 'shots' of 'hop-spresso' to the secondary along with my hops for dry-hopping. This sat for a little over a week, and was bottled last night.

To take it one step further, a few bottles were set aside, and into them, I added just a bit of hop-spresso. Maybe half an ounce. These eight bottles will be a test to see if my 'hop-shot' idea works. Hopefully, they will just burst with hop flavor and aroma.

We'll see in about three weeks!

If anyone has any experience with hop tea, or putting it into beers, let me know. I'd love to hear how it went.

Finally!

Welp, this has taken a bit too long to get back to writing an entry here. However, not too terribly much has happened since then!

As a review:

1. I did get a new laptop for Christmas, so I don't have the excuse of not being able to write a blog entry just about anywhere, anymore.
   
   
2. I haven't done much brewing since the last entry. I've brewed once. I ended up trying out a "Belgian-style" IPA. I made it with tons of Saaz hops, and used Belgian Abbey II yeast from Wyeast labs. It's bound to be fruity, hoppy, and a bit banana-y. It's currently in the Primary, awaiting me to stop being lazy and put it in the secondary and dry-hop it some.
   
   
3. The Canes are still hovering around last place in the NHL, however, there has bit a bit of excitement lately. A few weeks ago JR made the decision to take away the Captaincy from Rod Brind'Amour and give it to Eric Staal. This caused a minor rift in Caniac Nation of those who agreed with JR, and those who thought Roddy should have remain captain until his eventual retirement.
   
   Honestly, I agreed with the move. Brindy had become a shadow of himself for the past 2 seasons and has always been a "lead by example" captain. Well, he can still lead by example in the weight room, but his on ice performance inspired no one. The team next season will be comprised of youngsters and it will need a younger captain to lead it.
   
   Since the change, the Canes went on a tear. They won 5 of 6 games, including a 4 game win streak. Eric Staal has especially responded to being given the captaincy. He's been a scoring machine since, including a hat trick his first game as captain.
   
   The news as of late in the impending Trade Deadline and Winter Olympics Roster Freeze. Both could mean big time trades for the Canes. Whitney, Cullen, Corvo, Wallin, and Walker are just a few of the players the Canes hope they can get a return for. Hopefully, they can at least get something.
   
   
4. The SWMBO's finally in the third trimester. The Home Stretch! Just another two months and some change left! We're in the home stretch, and believe me, the SWMBO can feel it. Unfortunately, we've still got plenty of work to do before we're ready for the little assistant brewer to pop out.

That's it for now, I'll try to keep a bit more updated. Especially with how the Canes' trading goes here in the coming weeks.