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Fill in your location details Tim, i am sure people could point out cheaper places to buy hops.

Sorry about that, I didn't realise it wasn't filled in. Doing it now.

I live in Sandringham, Vic. Which is just south/southwest of the city. I buy my goods at Brewcraft in Oakleigh. I have been meaning to give craftbrewer a try, but I am worrying about storing excess hops, as I don't know how often I will be using each type.

On that point, if someone could tell me, how long will hops last for, and whats the best way of storing them? At the moment, I store and extra's in a ziplock bag (to be airtight) and shove them in the fridge. I even have a saaz hop plug in the back of my fridge somewhere, that I'm too afraid to use because its 6 months old.

I'm pretty sure you can keep em in the freezer for a fair while

Swainy wrote:I'm pretty sure you can keep em in the freezer for a fair while

I was reading somewhere that the freezer is a bad idea. I'll get back if I find out where. Possibly this forum.

Yeah its best to store them air-tight in the fridge. If kept that way they should last for ages (12months +) with minimal loss of flavor and AA%

Air tight yes, but the freezer is fine- better than the fridge for keeping the hops fresh.

+1 for the freezer. Its where all my hops are in those zip lock sandwich bags once opened.

I have been using ziplocks in the freezer as well, but it is amazing how much it helps if you can vacuum seal them. Anyone have a food saver they don't want?

I squeeze out as much air as i can and when noone is looking, i may even suck the air out....

Gives a whole new meaning to the word "hope head"

Me? A hop head? Not likely....

drsmurto wrote:I squeeze out as much air as i can and when noone is looking, i may even suck the air out....

Haha, I do that as well. If anything, I'm sucking out the bad bacteria's and such, right? So there can't be anything wrong with it

Actually there is a way to do the vacuum seal pretty well with a drinking straw and ziplock, I guess that is probably where the idea came from.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/521742/ho ... plock_bag/

Alrighty, I think I may just follow the original hopping plan from Boonies LCPA Clone, and have an odd amount of hops left in the fridge.

So now I know how to store the hops.... how do you guys weigh out your hops? The last time I used 12.5g of a hop, I simply pulled out 2 small plastic containers, and put pellets into each until they looked like they had the same amount. The smallest scale I have looks like this:

And I can definitely say that its not the easiest thing to measure out small amounts on (ie hops). Does anyone have any crazy methods that just so happen to work?

Jewelers Scale of eBay, less than $30.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/5-KG-Electronic- ... dZViewItem

I believe there are a few here who use the 'metric handful' method.....

i know that a 1/4 of a cup holds no more than 20g. As long as you dont pile it up. I use a cup these days......

Kevnlis wrote:Jewelers Scale of eBay, less than $30.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/5-KG-Electronic- ... dZViewItem

Hmm. Sounds nice. The price will probably go up into the three digits in the last 5 minutes of the auction. Now I have to pay my ebay fee's to unban my account.

You'll find that KMart, target and the like sell digi scales for around the $30-40 which when you take into account postage is on par with evilbay.

Mine are 3kg with a 1g accuracy. On sale i think i paid 29. If you are going to weigh out your own hops you really need something more accurate than scales which i wouldnt use for anything other than a guesstimate.

Cheers
DrSmurto

drsmurto wrote:You'll find that KMart, target and the like sell digi scales for around the $30-40 which when you take into account postage is on par with evilbay.

Mine are 3kg with a 1g accuracy. On sale i think i paid 29. If you are going to weigh out your own hops you really need something more accurate than scales which i wouldnt use for anything other than a guesstimate.

Cheers
DrSmurto

Yea after noticing the 1g accuracy, I realised it wont be as expensive as I thought.

Are you saying you wouldn't use a 1g accuracy digital scale for weighing hops? Or are you talking about other scales? Im a bit lost. Im not too worried if I want 21g of hops, and the scales give me 21.5g due to accuracy errors.

If you are not doing water chemistry accuracy to 1g is fine.