Hop Storage

[TheHairyHop]

I recently moved from the USA to Italy, and the production of beer in my house has taken an appropriately sized hit. I don't expect to be practicing full LODO any time soon as I had to leave my CO2 system behind, but it's been "fun" to piece a new system back together. Today I was thinking of storing hops. I used to vacuum seal mason jars for cold storage, but that option is no longer available to me/silly expensive due to my location.

The idea of using yeast as an O2 scavenger came to me today. Would it make sense to somehow put a little dish of yeast and food alongside a bag of hops inside a jar that is able to become airtight, leave it at room temp for an hour or so, and then pop it back in the freezer? I would obviously not like to create little hop grenades, but pressure is a calculation away. Is this a bit much for a cheap solution for hop storage?

[Owenbräu]

The english used to put a small dish of sulfites in the neck of a carboy to prevent oxygen exposure during maturing. You might be able to accomplish the same if you flush the jar with CO2, then drop some SMB and citric acid into the jar and seal it tight.

http://sjworthogs.org/documents/Old%20B ... 0Beers.pdf

Sulfite Boat.png (188.19 KiB) Viewed 8030 times

SMB + Citric.png (105.04 KiB) Viewed 8030 times

[TheHairyHop]

ah very interesting. I'll have to continue pondering this.

[Smellyglove]

I didn't understand. Put yeast and some food in a dry enviroment? Would that work?

I don't know what "tools" you have. But maybe one option would be to just put them in regular plastic bags on the counter, spread out the hops in one "layer" only, so they are all flat inside the bag, submerge the bag in water, )maybe you need two pieces of flat material in each hand so the hops won't bunch up again), so the pressure of the water will drive most air in the bag, out. Then while you're holding it there have a friend seal the bag with a lighter or something. I guess it would be easy to burn a hole through the bag though.. Or get a cheap sealer to make the seal. Then store in freezer. I know that air permeability isn't great in plastic bags, comparing to proper hop-bags, but if you don't leave them in the freezer for ages, i guess it would help.