[euge]

Is it possible to make a tincture from whatever variety of hops and still retain the desirable qualities? Anyone ever done it for brewing purposes?

[dean]

I've been reading a little on making essential oils and extracts, basically it looks like two methods, distilling and half arsed distilling.     Do a search on it and you'll find a few sites with some info.  I'd like to try it with hops as well since I'm going to have way more hops than I can use.    

[dean]

Here are a couple links you might find helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Essential-Oils

[denny]

Is it possible to make a tincture from whatever variety of hops and still retain the desirable qualities? Anyone ever done it for brewing purposes?

What kind of "desirable qualities" are you looking for?  I.E., do you want to use the tincture for bittering, flavor, aroma, all 3...that might have a bearing on if it's possible and how you'd do it.

[euge]

It would need to retain the flavor & bitterness primarily.

[denny]

Cool...that gives us some parameters to work by.

[euge]

OK. Just placed 4g of 16% Zeus in 100ml Everclear. Little jar. Will shake periodically and keep in the dark.

The wiki links are interesting. Hopefully alcohol will work with hop flowers.

[euge]

Well so far I'm not getting much aroma when I open the jar. No taste test yet.