After receiving these hops I feel it is my civic duty to write a review on them. The packaging first, and the immediate thing that takes your eye is that Northern Brewer have chosen the ubiquitous square packaging shape. It is to be commended that this traditional packaging will allow the user the option of 4 different corners to cut open thereby allowing access to the actual product inside. Moving outside, the package is made of a shiny materiel that hopefully will keep the hops warm on their journey to you in the same way that a space blanket does. One access to the hops has been achieved, either by a combination of cutting one of the four aforementioned corners, taking the top off the package or potentially just biting the package in 2, though this is not a recommended option, the hops inside can be examined. In look, and texture they are very similar to other hops in this series. Roundy looking tubes that smell of hops. My favourite method of dealing with these hops would be to obtain the use of a pair of scissors and possibly adult supervision whist using them and grasping the hop package firmly in the left hand, trip, or cut open the package by removing the upper right hand corner. Whoever corner you prefer to open is totally your choice and this being a free country no judgement should be made as to your choice of corner to cut. I feel that you can tell a lot about a person as to which corner they decide to cut and that information should not be used in a judgmental or discriminatory way. Are we not beyond the point whereby we sneer and ridicule people by which corner they remove first? The dark and distant days of not mixing with the X corner crowd should be long gone and it is time that such preferences should be discussed in polite and open conversation. Once whichever corner you choose has been thoroughly removed from the package, again without any judgmental decisions being made, keeping the grasp of the package move yourself and the package in a direction roughly approximate to the location of the boiling kettle of hot wort. This is where things really get interesting and should you decide to place each hop pellet individually into the wort or to place the opened package of hops into a muslim bag and transfer the hops into the wort, is of your own personal choice. I find that a third option would be to firstly to insert into the boiling wort a hop container sold by this and other fine establishments of the type to allow the hops to build and freedom to import their oils and flavonoids to the hot wort, while at the same time not contaminating said wort with floating debris and other detritus. The container I am talking about should be used to nurture and support the hops that have just come out of their space blanket sheltered existence and all too briefly they are inside a hot boiling vat of wort to import what we consider their most preferable qualities.
Should Northern Brewer be satisfied with a square package, would the hops not be more encouraged to roam in a round container, a triangular one or even such fanciful suggestions as a tubular method of packaging. Hops might not have much choice in the matter but I feel that it is the dutiful right of Northern Brewer as a fine establishment that caters to the many and varied brewing community at large to offer different packaging and let the brewers themselves decide which particular shaped packaging their hops are deservedly stored and served in.
Northern brewer is one of the bigger and most well known of the homebrewing shops, they have a large and well designed web site that offers easy access to the many and varied choices of equipment and ingredients that they stock. They should be applauded for their customer service and efforts put into assisting the novice and experienced alike in exploring the different methods, styles and techniques used in brewing not just beer but wine, cider, mead and many other fermentable options.
After boiling the hops they are thrown away, preferably so that dogs cannot reach them as hops are lethal to dogs, a little bit of information that should be more widely disseminated, and they impart a lovely flavour to the beer.
