Hop absorption rates

[RichardG]

Esteemed colleagues; I was wonderig if there is a 'standard' rate of hop absorption I should be using in my calculations, in the manner of grain absorption during mashing (i.e., Ikg of grain will absorb approx 1Ltr of liquid). Anyone have any figures if this is so?

[Deebee]

Not to my knowledge mate.

you can use more pellets as they absorb less but i would always use some leaf hops in order for them to make the filter over your manifold.

[196osh]

A sort of rough guide would be you will lose about 10-15mls per gram of whole hops. Then taking into account whatever dead space you have and trub. You can work out your boiler loses.

[gr_baker]

a couple of years ago I made a big IPA and I decided to allow the hops to drain overnight. 400g of Goldings yielded 2 litres of wort. I've repeated the process a couple of times when making similar brews with similar results. I'm not sure how many litres the hops actually absorb but it seems that you can recover about 0.5 litres per 100g if you want.

Russell.

[JayM72]

it does seem a bit odd as there seems to be calculations for all other aspects of brewing and the factor of losses due to absorption by the hops much be fairly important???

[adm]

I did some testing on this a while ago....and came up with a figure of 14ml per gramme of whole flower hops. I just use 15ml to be on the safe side, so for every 100g of hops, I add 1.5L to the water loss calculations.

No idea for pellets, but they seem to hardly suck up any liquid at all.

[196osh]

a couple of years ago I made a big IPA and I decided to allow the hops to drain overnight. 400g of Goldings yielded 2 litres of wort. I've repeated the process a couple of times when making similar brews with similar results. I'm not sure how many litres the hops actually absorb but it seems that you can recover about 0.5 litres per 100g if you want.

Russell.

My loses are more than double that with that level of hops, every time.