Pellet or Leaf - which do you use and why

[Jocky]

Mostly I use pellets:
Take up less space in the freezer;
Easier to get hold of many hops I like to use;
More consistent;
Suck up less wort;

If I'm in a hurry on brew day I bag the pellets so I can just pull them out, chill and drain the boiler.
If I'm not in a hurry I will leave them loose, and then chill and leave to stand for an hour or two so they drop out before draining.

My only exception is when using noble hops in delicate beers where I prefer to use leaf hops.

[Aleman]

In the 3V system leaf hops, in the BM pellets.

[Clibit]

Onbalance I probably prefer pellets, but I use both. Making small batches, I lose less wort to pellets. They keep well and take up less space in the freezer. But it's marginal and I tend to buy whatever is available, fresh and priced well.

[Peatbogbrewer]

Always used leaf until this very day when the nice man at malt miller rang me to say they'd ran out of challenger leaf, so put in pellets and a free hop sock! Now thats customer service. So soon i will be popping my pellet cherry for the first time...so to speak. Exciting times. The hop sock looks very close knit material so hoping for limited gunk going into boiler mush.....

[McMullan]

I insist on hop ‘leaf’. I’m not just an old romantic either. They create a very effective filter bed and they make clean up less messy, IMO. They remain in the boil too. Considering the anatomy of hops, the leaves/'flowers' (strobili) containing the glands holding much of the volatile stuff we’re after, they probably lose something during pelletisation, being ruptured during compression. From memory, this has been demonstrated and the process was modified somehow. Whether it improved the processed, pelletised product, I don’t know. The perceived benefit of pellet is storage, but this is an issue for suppliers/sellers and breweries, not most home brewers. I suspect pellet hops have been popularised by the reinvention of beer, aka craft brewing. Hop leaves do suck up a lot of beer when dry hopping, but a 'hop tea’ gets us out of that predicament and actually adds a little volume

[sladeywadey]

I use leaf for bittering and pellets for flavour/aroma/dry-hop. I use the leaf because it helps the filter ( I use a grainfather). I used to use a hop spider but recently found that if you stir for a couple of mins at flameout, then let it sit for 10 mins, then most of the pellets debris stays in the middle.

[a-slayer]

Both for me, but never pellets on their own as always need the leaf hop to help filter. Ratio of up to 40% hops seems to work fine with my filter which is just copper tube with holes in the bottom covered in a nylon bag.

[fego]

Interesting that (when writing this) leaf is most popular in the vote yet most of the comments seem to support pellets.

I think we'd have a different result if the options were extended to add a third option of both or neither.

For me, leaf is my go to but pellets work well too

[VANDEEN]

Cant say which i prefer as I've only ever used leaf, and a few drops of oil if i felt something was lacking ( not that impressed with the oils) will probably give pellets a go when i dry hop something.
Quite into Citra in bought beers so will poss' start with that.

[basswulf]

Pellets - easier to store. Since I'm doing short run, stove top BIAB brewing, I don't work through the hops very quickly.

Wulf

[chub1]

Only ever used pellets, find them easy to use and store

[dbg400]

I use both, it can depend on the supply of the type I want at the time of ordering, then I just use them in the brew accordingly. But I do prefer leaf for the boil and pellets for dry hopping.

Just the same for me.

[keith1664]

I use both but mainly leaf. If using pellets in the boil I usually use a bit of leaf to help with the filter bed.
For dry hopping I prefer pellet.

[Rookie]

I always buy hop pellets. The only leaf hops I use are the ones I grow.

[Mr Squiffy]

I don't mind either leaf or pellets in the boil but I try to avoid pellets for dry hopping, some types seem to escape my hop ball and the sediment ends up in the bottles.