Geterbrewed have been able to use their growth to drive down the price of hops in the microbrewery and homebrew industry.
We now have direct at source buying power and refrigerated storage to ensure we are correctly caring for the product. Our hop farmers actively seek perfection so we want to ensure we provide the correct service when handling, storing and repacking the hops
Leaf hops are only offered in 100g foil vac packed pouches for the homebrew market and 5kg foil bales for the microbrewery market. We offer a much larger variety of hop pellets in various quantities but experience has told us to repack leaf hops in one set size.
The quality of the leaf hops are the best we can possibly source, as we buy direct from the hop farmer and pay a fair price we know the hop product is premium quality.
I’ve covered the pellet vs leaf debate in previous blog entries but some systems are only set up for use with leaf hops, you can try using nylon hop bags as a work around to use pellets in these systems
Leaf hops or whole hop cones are usually kiln dried and pressed on the farm that they have been harvested at and usually within hours.
I have seen this in action, the hops are harvested and brought in on the back of a trailer and the vines are stripped to leave just the whole cone. The cones are then kiln dried to a moisture content of around 10%.
Leaf hops are never processed they are simply dried and packed. The farmers we buy our whole hops from cold store their hops, we keep that level of preservation up with the correct cold storage at our warehouse and then when we repack we use quality foil myler pouches which are nitrogen flushed.
During the drying process in the kiln the farmers are acutely aware that this is a delicate drying process, you don’t want the room filled with aroma believe it or not as you want to preserve that.
Usually hop farmers don’t have a pelletising plant so if they want pellets created they send the dried leaf hops/ whole comes to be processed into pellets.
I’ve held freshly kilned hops in my hand straight out of the hop kiln and they are definitely beautifully floral at this stage.
To add to our catalogue of extensive brewing products we have again added a large range of the finest leaf hops.