[yso191]

Has anyone seen any research on the aging process of hops with respect to their oil content?  I'm pretty familiar with alpha degradation, but not with oils.

I want to use Eureka hops, but my local source yakimavalleyhops.com is out.  I have 8 oz. that have been stored in my freezer in a vacuum sealed Mylar bag...but they are 2013's crop (back when they were referred to as Experimental Pinefruit).

Would you use them?  What can I expect?  Flavor changes?  Do I need to use more to compensate for age?

[reverseapachemaster]

Conversely I have very little to say on the alpha degradation but I can speak to using older hops for flavor/aroma/dry hopping. I have a fair amount of older hops hanging around my freezer that I use without problems. I have some 2013 and even some 2011.

I experience very little drop off on flavor or aroma under those conditions. More once the bags are open and more with leaf over pellet. The 2011 I have are leaf and from a flavor/aroma standpoint are probably 80-90% flavor and aroma but keep in mind that I opened those up in 2012 and they've been in a freezer bag in my freezer for about four years. So overall that's pretty good survival IMO. When I've opened mylar sealed pellet bags that were two or three years old they smelled very fresh and made perfectly fine beer. Even IPA.

[yso191]

Excellent!  Thank you.

[brewinhard]

Agreed.  I would not use any hops that were years old for bittering purposes (just so I can better estimate the bitterness in a given recipe) but vaccuum sealed in the freezer stay fresh with aroma/flavor for years. Brulosophy did an exbeeriment on this IIRC. Could not tell the difference and those hops were like 9 years old I think...

[erockrph]

+2 - Smell them first. If there's no off flavors (garlic, feet, cheese, etc), then they should be fine.