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.
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.
1 comment:
Are you nuts? Hop Tea...
Puck
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