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Author Topic: Hopping my tea. An experiment.  (Read 1068 times)

Offline Joe_Beer

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Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« on: September 22, 2021, 08:32:23 am »
I dry hopped a keg of beer this morning and had a 1/2oz of Citra left over. I put it back in the freezer and went to make some green tea. On the way upstairs, I wondered what it might be like to throw some hops in the tea. I've heard of doing this so thought I'd try it. I did a quick mental calculation based on a gallon of cider I dry hopped with 1/4oz of Citra a couple months back. It wasn't overpowering, I couldn't taste it, but two friends could so decided to try an 1/8oz of citra in 12 cups of tea. Wayy to bitter to drink. Tried again, but cut the hops back to 1 gram. Much less bitter (to me anyway) but notably, still bitter. I wondered why.. I use the coffee maker to make tea, just throw the hops and a couple tea bags in the filter basket. The water temp hitting the hops was 190F. Hopstand temp (for some recipes). Not boiling, but close. Hops were in the tea maybe 10 mins.

From what I've gathered about hops in terms of boiling, bittering, aroma and flavor is that adding them under boiling temp doesn't contribute to the overall bitterness. This does not seem to be the case. Is the bittering that occurrs just more intense since there isn't a lot in the water compared to wort?

l'm curious now about adding the hops after letting the tea cool for a bit. I have a teaball around here somewhere....


Offline Steve Ruch

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2021, 08:48:27 am »
You'll start getting bitterness at around 180f or so.
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Offline denny

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2021, 09:08:18 am »
You'll start getting bitterness at around 180f or so.

THIS
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Offline Joe_Beer

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2021, 11:36:20 am »
You'll start getting bitterness at around 180f or so.

Thanks. I tried again with 1g around 170F and much less bitter (hardly any) but definite aroma. Cool!

Offline ExtractDoug

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2021, 01:48:07 pm »
Not to mention, the gravity of your tea is 1.000.  Hops do a lot more bittering at that OG than a typical 1.050+ wort.

Offline Joe_Beer

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #5 on: September 28, 2021, 03:47:16 am »
Not to mention, the gravity of your tea is 1.000.  Hops do a lot more bittering at that OG than a typical 1.050+ wort.

Thanks! I was wondering why just a few pellets made such a noticeable difference.

Offline BrewNerd

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #6 on: September 28, 2021, 08:21:32 am »
I read somewhere that making a tea of hops is a way to get a sense of how that varietal would interact with a beer.

But since the gravity of the water would be so much lower than a wort, you'd only get a best case scenario. Still a useful data point but, you'd have to keep in mind that a brewing hopping rate would need to be much much higher.

Perhaps a more useful tea experiment would be to prep a wort of a known gravity then dilute it down step by step so you've have a sense of what a given hop variety with a known alpha concentration would taste/ smell like at 1.050, 1.040, 1.030 etc.

There must be something wrong with me because that sounds like fun. And I was a B- chemistry student.


Offline denny

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Re: Hopping my tea. An experiment.
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2021, 08:55:59 am »
I read somewhere that making a tea of hops is a way to get a sense of how that varietal would interact with a beer.

But since the gravity of the water would be so much lower than a wort, you'd only get a best case scenario. Still a useful data point but, you'd have to keep in mind that a brewing hopping rate would need to be much much higher.

Perhaps a more useful tea experiment would be to prep a wort of a known gravity then dilute it down step by step so you've have a sense of what a given hop variety with a known alpha concentration would taste/ smell like at 1.050, 1.040, 1.030 etc.

There must be something wrong with me because that sounds like fun. And I was a B- chemistry student.

Nope it really tells you nothing other than hop tea is disgusting stuff.  Gives you no real insight into the hop.
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