So you’ve got your hop plant (if not buy one quick here!), it has started flowering and you want to use it in your homebrews. But how? Preparing hops is not a particularly complex process, but you do have to be a little careful and make sure you do it right. Obviously you will need to pick your hops first, this is something we have gone over before so check out that article first. Once picked your hops need to be dried, this is for multiple reasons. First you’ll be able to get more flavour out of your hops, similar to herbs being dried helps intensify the flavour. The second being you want to kill off anything still on the hops. Be it bugs of bacteria you don’t want anything weird in your ho
You can add a lot of interesting ingredients to beer, the possibilities for flavour are almost endless. But not every ingredient has to be about flavour, helping to preserve or anything particularly useful. In the expanding world of homebrew and craft beer people want their drinks to stand out, this leads to stuff like our Pale Unicorn Ale which has an approximately magical glitter. How this is achieved and what else you can do is a expanding topic so let’s break it down. The first thing you have to remember is keep it food safe. Any addition to your homebrew must always be safe to consume, this applies to all parts. Some may use ingredients that may be harmful in large quantities but then y
