Beer Forum

Anyone have any tips for ageing hops for a Berlinerweiss or a Lambic to get the AA% down next to zero but without forming the "cheesy" isovaleric acid parmesean cheese smell/taste?

-I've been ageing some already low AA SAAZ for about 6 months but they turned very cheesy...



Adam

To make a good lambic or berliner weisse you do not need to use aged hops. Is it traditional for lambics? sure. Not for berliner weisse whatsoever though. For my lambics I use 8 year Mt. Hood pellets that my LHBS guy gave to me b/c he never sold them. Very generous of course... If I did not have those I would simply use the lowest AA% noble hop I could find. I would probably only use about 1 oz or so based on the original AA%.

Do you belong to any homebrew clubs? If so, I bet you could ask around and see if anyone has any old hops lying around you might be able to use. I bet you would find some from them in no time. Just avoid any high AA% hops and/or citrus american varieties.

I haven't done it, so take my comments with a grain of salt until someone else weighs in on it... but I seem to recall it being said somewhere that the cheesy character will fade in time, and then the hops are good to use. So you would just need to age them through the cheese phase.

I think Jamil said in BCS the cheese goes away but then supposedly the long boil for lambics is partially about getting rid of the cheesy aroma.

The point of aging the hops is to oxidize the beta acids. You should be able to do this faster with some heat. Sparrow's book covers this I think.

One could make the argument that if you are not doing an ambient fermentation, you don't need hops anyway.

JohnF wrote:
One could make the argument that if you are not doing an ambient fermentation, you don't need hops anyway.

+1

Didn't Jean from Cantillion say they boiled for 3 or 4 hours, and also talking a probrewer friend he said the same thing. The chessey smell is volatile and it pretty easily driven off.