First Attempt at Hop Water

>> Sunday, August 01, 2021

Experimentation time! One of my taps on my keezer is reserved for carbonated water. It's really nice for cocktails or just when you want a refreshing fizzy drink without any calories. I think it was a little over a year ago that I discovered Lagunitas Hop Water which is essentially carbonated water with hops. I usually buy it by the case and I've turned a bunch of my friends onto it too. Like carbonated water, it's also great for cocktails (I recommend making Ranch Water with Desert Door Texas Sotol) or just when you want something hoppy but can't have or don't want a beer.

This is my first attempt at making hop water, so this recipe will likely change as a refine it. Anyway, here's attempt #1:

5 gallons Walmart brand Spring Water
Phosphoric acid to adjust water to 4.5pH
1t Nutritional Yeast
6g Waimea (whirlpool)
6g BRU-1 (whirlpool)
6g Rakua (whirlpool)
6g Waimea (added to keg)
6g BRU-1 (added to keg)
10g Motueka (added to keg)

Water was heated to 170F while whirlpooling to sanitize everything.

Add nutritional yeast and whirlpool hops.

Chill then transfer to keg with dry hops. In this case, I used a stainless mesh tube for dry hopping in the keg.

Force carb for a few days and (hopefully) enjoy.

Brewing Notes
You couldn't ask for an easier brew session. Your basically just heating the water then chilling it back down and transferring to keg. Stay tuned for tasting notes.

Update 8/2/2021
It's still not carb'd yet, but I pulled a sample today. Appearance-wise, it has a slight greenish tint similar to Lagunitas. Aroma is definitely more intense than Lagunitas. Flavor...well it's kind of like chewing on a hop pellet; I may have overdone it on the dry hops. I've seen other folks comment that the first few pints were too intense on hop character, including bitterness, and that it got better the further into the keg they went. So, I'm not giving up on this batch quite yet, but I definitely may need to dial things back a bit.

Update 8/3/2021
Ok, the flavor is much improved today. A lot of the raw pellet character is fading. I left my sample glass on my desk for about 45 minutes and noticed a bunch of hop debris had settled out, so I think that most of the harsh bitterness and tannic character is coming from hop debris in suspension. This seems to be consistent with the experiences reported by others (e.g. Brulosophy). Yesterday I was thinking this might be a dumper, but today I'm very optimistic. Carbonation is still a little low, but I filled this keg to the brim so I was expecting it might take a little longer to carb due to reduced headspace and the fact that it took a while to chill down to serving temp.