AHS Hop Ball

While brewing the Kentucky Common, I was also conducting 2 experiments. The first experiment was the anise. I once used spruce essence in a beer. It was nasty! Ever since, I've been leery of strong spices in beers. Yeah, I've done cinnamon, cardemom and coriander, but the smell of the anise was so strong, I am afraid the beer will be undrinkable.

The second experiment was using what Austin Homebrew Shop called hop balls. These little jewels did reduce the amount of trub that went into my fermenter. I put one ounce of pellet hops into each ball, and thought to myself, "Why they'll hold two ounces." At the end of the boil, however, I noticed that the hops had expanded to fill the entire ball. I opened each hop ball and looked at a huge, green golfball. I plopped the hops into the trash and wondered how much of the alpha acids were extracted. The outside of the hop sphere was a brownish green, the inside, bright green.

I sampled the beer, and it tasted like an slightly sweetened tea. There was a tiny hint of anise, but very little hop flavor. We'll see what it's like next week when I transfer the beer to secondary.