Hop Tea?

[LiverDance]

Anybody ever try and make hop tea using a french press? If so what was your procedure and when did it go into your beer? I was thinking of doing this in a Picaroons Best Bitter Clone since the brewers log says they use a hop perc.

Brian

[mr x]

I've been planning to try this for ages. I picked up a big Bodum at Winners but haven't got around to it yet. There's a good procedure in the BYO Hop issue. If you don't have it, I can lend it to you.

[LiverDance]

Sure thing, that sounds like it's be an interesting read.

[Brewnoser]

I have done that a lot. Apparently there is some advantage to using cooler water over a longer time. But I have tended to use hot (>80 deg) to keep tings clean.

If you have some cheap vodka, you might try that as well. Wait for about an hour after infusing.

[mr x]

The BYO article uses weak a DME/LME mix for the tea, probably for a couple reasons. One would be pH, and the other is the tea gets used for priming. I like the latter reason, as I find I prefer naturally primed kegs if I have the time to let them go.

[LiverDance]

I was going to use some of my sparge water for the mix and let it sit while till the boil finished and was cooled down. As a side note, what do you usually prime with in your kegs and how much do you use? I was thinking of starting to do this as well. Did you cut your dip tubes?

[mr x]

I usually go 4-5 oz of corn sugar for a 2.5 volume beer. I have used honey, cane sugar, jaggery, and even let the beer finish in the keg. Although that last one is a bit tricky.

Don't bother cutting the dip tubes, just toss the first two pints if they are too cloudy.

[LiverDance]

Do you reset the lids with Co2 after putting the sugar in the kegs?

[mr x]

Oh yes I forgot, you have to do that. I usually give the keg a purge and set the lid at 30 psi, just to be sure it stays set while the yeast goes to work.

[LiverDance]

How do you prep your sugar? Do you just throw it in dry or do you pre boil it with some water? Got my coffee press last night so Saturday will be it's first tryout. I'll be doing 2 40L batches, Prop IPA Clone and Picaroons Best Bitter Clone.

Brian

[mr x]

I give the sugar a quick boil with as little water as I can get away with. I use small erlenmeyer flasks for this. I usually don't even bother cooling it down, just throw it into the keg. It is such a small volume, it cools very fast. With the honey, I just warm it up a bit, not boiled for sure, maybe 140f. Honey is supposed to be an antiseptic, but I haven't quite got the courage to throw it in raw, yet. People say you can do it though.

[LiverDance]

So I did my hop tea on the weekend. I got a coffee press and put 160g of pellet hops into and topped it off with water. The hops swelled so much I had to shovel them out with a spoon into a much larger bowl of sparge water for the remainder of the time. It was pretty funny. X i hope you have a super large press for the amount of hops you use in things

[mr x]

I bought the biggest press I could find, about 8 cups.