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  • Bad Galaxy

    In the beginning of this year we had the opportunity to purchase some Galaxy hop. I was informed by the seller that they came from another brewery that had an over stock and they wished to unload them. I was assured that the hops came from 2017 crop and I received a copy of their test results and everything looked good, Alpha 14.2% Beta 8.2% HSI 0.325. We purchased the hops and immediately put three beers in production.
    This had been my first time working with Galaxy and we all were excited to get the beer out. When tasting the beer from fermentation to packaging I was not impressed with it and I felt the hop profile was subpar and a little odd. After packaging we received a large amount of complaints. As a result we began running tests and going over our records and the finial suspect was Galaxy hops. We had them annualized and found that they were damaged. The analysis read as Alpha 11.2% Beta 5.2% HSI 0.42.

    My question, has anyone ran across this before with Galaxy purchased early this year?

  • #2
    Can you describe the odd flavours etc.? What did the packaging look like?

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    • #3
      The bitterness was much lower than calculated which is understandable after the analysis showing a 20% loss in alpha. Flavors also resembled a mild cheese and wet straw or musty grass.
      We received the hops boxed and bagged from a national hop supplier, none of the bags showed any tampering or damage.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Short Fuse View Post
        The bitterness was much lower than calculated which is understandable after the analysis showing a 20% loss in alpha. Flavors also resembled a mild cheese and wet straw or musty grass.
        We received the hops boxed and bagged from a national hop supplier, none of the bags showed any tampering or damage.
        Did the packaging have any HPA (Hop Products Australia) branding on it? The foil bag should have branding and crop year printed on it.

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        • #5
          Galaxy can have some grassy notes. Cheese isn't good though, sounds oxidized. This would also explain the lower AA, its very possible the hops are old, or improperly repackaged. As it was said, look for the HPA markings. If there are none, it was repackaged by someone.

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          • #6
            Yes they were repackaged by a major hop supplier. We were assured by them that the hops were top quality and even provided us with the lab results, Alpha 14.2% Beta 8.2% HSI 0.325.
            After receiving 110 pounds we brewed three batches back to back and reserved the remaining bags in the freezer. Standard practice is to freeze all hops that are more than 45 days out from brew day, and those hops that are in the brew schedule are weighed out and put in out walk in cooler.

            After noting the off flavors we had the hops analyzed ourselves with a result of Alpha 11.2% Beta 5.2% HSI 0.42.
            these hops were definitely treated poorly before we received them.

            My question is has this happened to anyone else?
            I am blown away that a major hop provider would try to pull off such a stunt.

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            • #7
              It is very unfortunate when something like this happens. This is out of the control of the original supplier and most of the times they will get the stick for it. I refuse hops from ANYONE who has repacked hops from another supplier.

              Cheers

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              • #8
                Completely understandable, but these hops were from a trusted source, a major supplier that I had work with for a long time.

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                • #9
                  Repack

                  Originally posted by Gbbc View Post
                  It is very unfortunate when something like this happens. This is out of the control of the original supplier and most of the times they will get the stick for it. I refuse hops from ANYONE who has repacked hops from another supplier.

                  Cheers
                  We repack from time to time, usually when we have 44 pounders that we need to break down to 11 pounders, and we are very happy with the results.

                  We have a professional sealer with nitrogen purging.

                  Repacking is not the issue if done correctly.

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                  • #10
                    As far as I could tell the repacking was not the issue. It was the fact they sent us analysis information that I believe was false. The analysis they provided was from testing in November 2017. We purchased the hops in January of 2018, moved the hops to the walk in cooler, brewed three day later and put the remaining hop in our freezer. After understand that the hops were the problem we pulled a sample and sent it off to be analyzed with a result of 20% degrade in the quality. With a dramatic degrade of 20% those hops must have gone through hell and back before we received them or they lied about their analysis.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Arbor Brewing View Post
                      We repack from time to time, usually when we have 44 pounders that we need to break down to 11 pounders, and we are very happy with the results.

                      We have a professional sealer with nitrogen purging.

                      Repacking is not the issue if done correctly.
                      I totally agree with this. You will be surprised at how many does not know that the packs needs to be nitrogen flushed!

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