Having recently consumed a case of The Citra Bomb One from Hoplark, I've fallen down the hop tea/water rabbit hole. I've always enjoyed sparkling water, but the addition of hops really changes the game. I've increasingly been finding myself in situations where I'm wanting a beer, but don't want the accompanying buzz, and hop tea has filled that niche perfectly. Since my first pint from Hoplark, I've been grabbing up as many other hop waters as possible, like Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher, Shorts' Thirst Mutilator, and I'm convinced. The problem is that all of these options sell at a similar price points as their craft beers, and I figured I could make my own at a significant price break.
Despite scouring the web for resources, hop tea does not support the same fervent community as homebrewing does. r/hopwater is probably a good jumping off point, but its not very active. There are a few recipes scattered about, but most people either keg their output, or store it in the refrigerator. I do not have that type of equipment or fridge space, so I took it upon myself to figure out how to create a shelf stable hop water by force.
The first problem was to get a good tasting recipe. There are recipes galore, but few document the target IBUs or volumes of CO2. To land on a reasonable bitterness goal, I started with a very quick experiment where I steeped some hop pellets in an Aeropress for varying durations. The results were honestly terrible, being both overly bitter, but also scratchy in the throat. In reflection I'm quite sure this is due to the brewing method though. The Aeropress forces water through the hops as you expel the water, which I believe brought out some of the hops' bad qualities. The lower dose samples were okay, so for my first carbonated batch I landed on a 10 IBU target. As for volumes of CO2, I aimed high at 3.8, which is equivalent to a German style weizen. Unfortunately, a beer with such intense carbonation exceeds the .5% limit required to deem a beverage non-alcoholic, but .7% is still low enough for most adults to not notice.
As for shelf stability the FDA deems a pH of 4.6 or below shelf stable. I was a bit of chemistry nerd in high school, and I remember that pH can be finicky so I'm building in a bit of a safety factor and aiming for a pH or 4.2 or below. I know carbonation lowers pH, but I didn't know by how much, and wasn't certain how hops or tea played into that equation. The commercially available hop teas and waters only have carbonated water, hops, and citric acid, so I figured I'd do the same, and purchased some ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid, and some wine making pH strips (for accuracy at low pH). After speaking with a water treatment chemist, the best practice when using acid powders is to start with distilled water, although tap is okay in a pinch, and acidify a small volume to a very low pH, and then add that volume to the brew water. Using the high school chemistry equation of M1V1+M2V2 = M3(V1+V2) you can determine how much of your first solution is required to achieve your desired molarity, and thereby the pH.
But then it crossed my mind that if the result would be shelf stable, would my yeast die before carbonation was achieved. The champagne yeast I had purchased had a technical data sheet, but didn't mention viable pH ranges, but the folks at Lallemand Brewing helped me out and confirmed that the yeast while most effective between pHs of 5.2-4.2 was viable between 6.0-3.0 and could push those ranges even further, but then fermentation would slow.
Armed with this knowledge I made a micro batch of 6 bottles with citra hops and white tea. Everything went smoothly, but the result was lackluster. For the first batch I acidified exclusively with ascorbic acid, which gave the tea a lemon vibe. That would be all well and good, but the other tea and hop flavors were almost not existent. The tea is very delicate and meant to play a supporting role, but even it was notably over diluted. The hops however were basically not present at all. The nose had some citra vibes, but it did not translate into any noticeable flavor. The next batch needed a much bigger hop punch. The carbonation was spot on though.
For the second attempt I made a few changes. First I increased the batch size to 12L, doubled the hops, and reduced tea dilution for 50% to 25% (according to its brewing instructions). Secondly, I decided to brew a hop water at the same time. I had gotten my hands on some Simcoe hop extract, and figured it was a good time to experiment to see if extracts had any noticeable effect on the brewing process or flavor.
Both brews went fairly well, though going back to back took a good chunk of time. Lots of good lessons learned, but none seemed to jeopardize the brew.
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