Hops in Whiskey

[MSWDistiller]

I am looking make a whiskey from a hopped beer. Before I started my trials I wanted to see if anyone had some input. A few of my questions are:

How do bittering vs late hop additions influence the character?

Does dry hopping have an effect?

Anything to look out for in the cuts?

Anything else you think I should know?

Thanks,

Max

[John McKee]

Max,

Distilling hopped beer is done but not very often. The concept of distilling is to "concentrate the essence of"....and hops when concentrated via distillation isn't always awesome.....and this is coming from a guy who likes hoppy beer.

We've done it. We had a few dozen other examples by other distilleries and its sort of hit and miss. I'm sorry I don't have more concrete details to your answers, but the best example I've ever come across was by Clear Creek in Portland.

Cheers,

McKee

[NEPA-still-chillin]

He is spot on. I've done a few and...its an acquired taste so to say.

[ebstauffer]

We've done a number of small-scale test batches (I'm a big fan of Bell's Hopslam if that tells you anything) and it's not what I would describe and pleasant. I know it seems to be the trend for those folks in the northwest corner but I just don't get it. Be that as it may, I advise purchasing a very small (4 liter perhaps) lab still (mantle / boiling flask / graham condenser / stand) and charge it with low wines that you've taken a cursory heads & tails cuts on. The rub is that with such small volumes it's really simple to push the heads through the entire run. Run it slowly and take diligent cuts. Good luck and let us know what you think.

[Adam]

If you haven't read it already you should read the book "Alt Whiskey". Some good info on different techniques using hops in whiskey.

[CountySeat]

We've done some slightly hopped beers and they came out fine. Others, not so much. May want to reach out to Seven Stills in SF.

http://www.sevenstillsofsf.com/whiskey

[SpiritedConsultant]

Hi Max,

The best place to start is to look at the boiling points of flavor active compounds in the hops and then compare to those of compounds that you are more familiar with. Additionally, the flavor threshold of each compound needs to be considered.

Common Compounds (not comprehensive)

Humulone (Alpha Acid): BP 488 C - Very low volatility, unlikely to have significant impact

Myrcene (Essential Oil): BP 64 C - Boiling point is just below that of methanol, expect this to congregate at the front of the run

Humulene (Essential Oil): BP 99 C - Boiling point is just below water, so expect this later in the run

Caryophellene (Essential Oil): BP 129 C - Boiling point is a bit above butanol and within the range of the amyl alcohols, so expect this predominately at the back of the run.

As a general rule, any flavors from bittering hops that persist through the boil are not volatile enough to make it into your spirit through distillation. The reason for late hop additions is to preserve the volatile aroma compounds. Most of these would be volatile enough to make it into the spirit depending on your methods and cut points. Thus, aroma hops would likely have a greater influence, though this would have lot to do with the specific hops selected. I would also recommend against boiling your wort with the hops in order to preserve the aromatics for distillation.

Dry hopping your distillate would certainly have an impact. Among other things, it would allow you to extract the non-volatile compounds. Note that hop bitterness comes from isomerized alpha acid, not the "raw" alpha acids found in hops. The later are isomerized by heat during the boil. If you want to achieve this bitterness, you would need to find a way to isomerize the AA or just add an IAA extract.

On a side note, I have tried quite a few hopped spirits, and the only one that I found enjoyable was Anchor's White Christmas (2012), which this post has inspired to fetch from my shelf and have a glass.

[captnKB]

Id second Adam. Alt Whiskey the book by corsair, dives very heavily into the topic of distilling hopped beer.

Ive done one hopped beer distillation in which I used a brown ale with low IBU and distilled it. In my opinion it tastes fantastic. The beer did foam a TON and had to use bubble breaker aka silicon to keep the foam from loading up the plates.

[John McKee]

Do you have volatility ratios for these compounds in various Ethanol concentrations. I've noticed from the literature that flavor compounds and their volatility ratios are often affected by ethanol concentrations....is this the case with Hops chemicals as well?

Cheers,

McKee

Hi Max,

The best place to start is to look at the boiling points of flavor active compounds in the hops and then compare to those of compounds that you are more familiar with. Additionally, the flavor threshold of each compound needs to be considered.

Common Compounds (not comprehensive)

Humulone (Alpha Acid): BP 488 C - Very low volatility, unlikely to have significant impact

Myrcene (Essential Oil): BP 64 C - Boiling point is just below that of methanol, expect this to congregate at the front of the run

Humulene (Essential Oil): BP 99 C - Boiling point is just below water, so expect this later in the run

Caryophellene (Essential Oil): BP 129 C - Boiling point is a bit above butanol and within the range of the amyl alcohols, so expect this predominately at the back of the run.

As a general rule, any flavors from bittering hops that persist through the boil are not volatile enough to make it into your spirit through distillation. The reason for late hop additions is to preserve the volatile aroma compounds. Most of these would be volatile enough to make it into the spirit depending on your methods and cut points. Thus, aroma hops would likely have a greater influence, though this would have lot to do with the specific hops selected. I would also recommend against boiling your wort with the hops in order to preserve the aromatics for distillation.

Dry hopping your distillate would certainly have an impact. Among other things, it would allow you to extract the non-volatile compounds. Note that hop bitterness comes from isomerized alpha acid, not the "raw" alpha acids found in hops. The later are isomerized by heat during the boil. If you want to achieve this bitterness, you would need to find a way to isomerize the AA or just add an IAA extract.

On a side note, I have tried quite a few hopped spirits, and the only one that I found enjoyable was Anchor's White Christmas (2012), which this post has inspired to fetch from my shelf and have a glass.

[SpiritedConsultant]

Do you have volatility ratios for these compounds in various Ethanol concentrations. I've noticed from the literature that flavor compounds and their volatility ratios are often affected by ethanol concentrations....is this the case with Hops chemicals as well?

Cheers,

McKee

That's a good point. Unfortunately, I don't have that data. I just quickly looked up the BPs of a few compounds to get rough idea of where they would congregate in the run. There are a bunch variables that could impact this. As most of the aroma compounds in hops appear to be terpenes, I would expect them to behave in a manner similar to other turpenes in this respect. I've never actually worked with hops from a distiller's perspective, but I have used quite a few other botanicals with malt distillates. From a practical perspective, once you have a general idea of what a botanical can contribute, I think the best thing you can do is experiment (that's the fun part anyway, right?). We don't even know all the flavor-active compounds in hops, let alone their physical properties or precise concentrations in various cultivars.

Max, If I were you, I would get myself a tiny still (or several) that you can run on a hotplate and some GNS (dilute it). Do some trial runs to experiment with various cut-points, cultivars, macerations, etc. Then use this info to come up with some recipe trials and run those through the wee stills. It's not a perfect predictor of how the botanicals will behave on production runs, but it will give you a very good idea for minimal time and capital expenditure. This approach is good for any unfamiliar botanicals, not just hops.

[P.T. Wood]

I have had success with both gin and whiskey using fresh hops loaded into our gin basket. I think we get more genuine hop flavor and the level is easier to control. Good luck!

[PeteB]

I have distilled some craft beer from my son's small brewery. Aged it in a small barrel. I really like it. No bitterness but mainly florals from the hops.

Often made in France "Fleur de bier"

eg http://www.thedrinkshop.com/products/nlpdetail.php?prodid=1846

[Michaelangelo]

For classification purposes is this a flavored whiskey, gin, or a distilled spirit specialty? My suspicion is that you would need a formula , but if you are buying the beer from a brewery how much of a formula do you really need? TIB required?

[SpiritedConsultant]

Well, it is certainly not a gin. From my reading, the exact classification would depend on how you use the hops and how you define "flavoring" as used in § 5.23, but I'm a distiller, not an attorney.

[nabtastic]

Hops are not a normal ingredient in whiskey so it should fall under the DSS category - I think. I think the previous reference to gin is using the malt base with hops in the "gin basket."

[stevea]

Can anyone comment - I've read that distilling hopped beers really gums up the still and requires an extensive cleaning after.

I'd be more tempted by the gin-basket approach or even adding hop extracts. An ethanol still is a filter and trying to catch two very different chemicals with the same filter seems a fools errand.

[captnKB]

Steve, what you have read is correct. The hopped beer foams ALOT and the foam if it makes it to your column will clog up everything. That said, hopped beer also makes a delicous single malt

[nabtastic]

captainKB - are you boiling the mash/wort prior to fermentation in the manner that breweries do (not all distilleries boil mash prior to fermentation)? Have you tried anti-foam agents in the pot?

[SpiritedConsultant]

Quoting from an IBD technical summary on foam. PM me if anyone wants a pdf of the whole doc.
"In addition to the hydrophobic proteins, iso-alpha acids from the hops also exhibit hydrophobicity and hence make an important contribution to foam stability. The hops are thought to help bridge between the bubbles adding additional support."

It should also be noted that distilling a beer produced for consumption and distilling whisky wash with hops are related but different. As you are probably aware, foam characteristics can vary widely from beer to beer, which is going to make a big impact if you try to distill it. For example, I am currently doing some trial batches of bier schnaps for a local brewer. I started with their hefeweizen, which has high protein and great head retention (as the style should). As expected, it foams like all hell and leaves a lot of residue in the still. I had to run the still quite slowly for the first third of my low wines runs to prevent puking. The hefe is only lightly hopped, but I expect that their heavily hopped IPA will actually be a lot easier to distill because it should have a lower level of foaming polypeptides.

On a side note, be very careful with thick foam if you are using a packed column. These tend to be more prone to clogging, which can cause a dangerous pressure build up.