Recipe Book



Home Brewing Recipes

Search BrewingKB



Home Brewing Articles

General Brewing

  • Homebrewing
    Discuss your brewing techniques, brewing styles, and any tips you might have. Use our community to ask about these things as well.
  • Bottling
    Tips and tricks to finding a home for your beer.
  • Equipment
    Show off your equipment, share tips on maintaining and sanitizing.
  • Terms
    Common home brewing terms and jargon for the new home brewer.

Recipes

  • Homebrew Recipes
    Share your recipes and comment on other's recipes that you try.
  • Beer Related Recipes
    Do you have a good recipe that uses beer (or wine)? Know of any good marinade's? Let us know about them here.

Alternative Brewing

  • Brewing Cider
    Techniques for brewing cider. Tips, tricks, questions, they all go here.
  • Wine
    The art of distilling wine. Discuss tricks to the trade, your successes (or failures), and the joy of distilling wine.
  • Mead
    A wine made from fermented honey and water. Discuss brewing this favorite of the Romans and Greeks.

Home Brewing Community

  • The Pub
    A place to discuss things not about brewing, beer, wine, etc. This is a place to get to know our other members outside of our shared enjoyment of home brewing.
  • Beer / Wine Talk
    Talk about your favorite beers and wines (and meads and ciders, etc) with other beer and wine lovers.

Brew Market

  • Selling Brewing Stuff
    Whether its equipment or ingredients, if you need to get rid of some of your brewing stuff, do it here.
  • Buying Brewing Stuff
    Why pay regular price when you can request what you need from our brewing community?

You are not logged in.

Attention: Check out the new BKB Home Brewing Blog

Pages: 1

old/stale hops?

I was planning on doing a Belgian white brew this weekend but just noticed that the hops I got for this recipe a year+ ago (when I initially planned to do it, ahem) don't seem so fresh anymore.  Should I toss 'em (and further delay this brew) or just go for it?  ..And for  you Belgian brew folk (this is my 1st): do you keep ferentation temps at 70 or higher?

 

The AA content on the hop package is when they are PICKED, they will lose some of their alpha acid content over time. How much depends on their initial AA, if you keep them sealed, and where they are stored. In other words, out in the open, refrigerator, freezer, cave, fish tank, Alaskan tundra, whatever.

It is difficult to know what the AA is after a year. I doubt they are ruined, but I can pretty much guarantee you they have lost some acidity and flavor. You didn't say what kind of hop it was. No I don't think you need to toss them, but you might want to add a little extra to the boil.

As for the yeast, again, you didn't say which one you are using. The manufacturer (wyeast, white labs, or otherwise) give specifications right on their web site.

I brewed a Belgian Trippel on Xmas day and just kegged it last night. It didn't turn out at all like what I wanted, but that is my fault. I didn't take my time with it. The temperature was usually around 64F (give or take) while it was fermenting. It tastes fine. You can ferment those into the 80s, but that isn't a good idea. Whatever the manufacturer calls for, you really need to keep it close to that range.

 

Pages: 1