Salut, est-ce qu’il y a des personnes d’entre vous qui ont déjà fait affaire avec un laboratoire privé pour déterminer le taux d’acide alpha et d’huiles de houblon récolté maison? J’ai une extrêmement bonne saison de récolte et je crois que savoir ces chiffres serait intéressant pour les brasses utilisant ces houblons dans la prochaine année (habituellement pour le taux d’acide alpha, je prends le plus bas taux d’acide alpha connu pour la sorte de houblon, donc guesstimate les IBU de ces bières là)
I think that you have the best way for home hop growers. I’ve always done that in the past to reasonable results (and save the hard me grown hops for later in the boil when the exact AA matters less).
We are doing some fresh hops beers with local farms this year at KBC, so I will ask what they do for analysis. My guess though is that it is A) too expensive for anyone not planning to sell them B) requires more hops than you’d like give up to get a reliable variance.
Another way to test might be to make a small batch of a basic beer (e.g. Blonde Ale with just a 60min addition, or 60 and flameout). Aim for something that should be a good beer based on the calculations, then taste it and judge if it’s more or less bitter than you were expecting.
Thanks Sam for your input. I just found yesterday that Acadia University in Nova Scotia (ALab, Acadia Laboratory for agri-food and beverage) can do it for 77$ (I’ll try to get more info from them). For that amount, they test % alpha and beta acids, HSI as well as moisture level. They need 100g dried hops. As I will get around 5lbs of dried Cascade this year (it’s crazy those four plants grew this year), I might send them a sample and see if my approx numbers are close to theirs (and if my drying schedule for moisture level is ok)
That’s awesome! I would have never guessed it would be that cheap. Definitely curious how the process goes if you end up sending them some.
Also, that’s an incredible amount of hops. Nicely done!
I had a Cascade and a Perle plant when I lived in Dorval that produced more than I could ever use.
They both adapt well to our climate and will produce tons of hops without ever doing anything special to the plants.
My Cascade plants really delivered this year that’s for sure! For Magnum and Chinook, they both gave more about a pound of dry hops each, which is to be expected (I won’t send those for analysis considering 100g required…)
This is what I found, it’s even cheaper if you only want alpha/beta acid levels:
J’ai déjà fait faire des analyses chez Houblon des Appalaches, de mémoire, il faut environ 100g et une analyse coûtait 45$ à l’époque.