Anybody ever infuse hops in gin?

[JaySchafer]

After hearing of this in a few places online, I'm planning to infuse some hops in a fifth of gin once my hops order arrives. I figured I'd ask if anyone else had done this, or if anyone had any thoughts on it. Any ideas on how much hops to use and how long to infuse the hops for?

Should be a fun thing to try out, and may make for some good gin+beer cocktails (heresy, I know...). I'm starting with some cheap gin ($10/5th) and will move to something a bit fancier if all goes well.

[Bill Lawrence]

That's an interesting idea, I have never heard of that one. Although I don't really care for Gin, I suppose that you could use any other spirit and get the same effect. I would think that alcholol whould be a much better solvent than water so theoretically, you should be able to suck more of the goodies out of the hops. What flavors do you expect to extract, would it be like dry hopping on steriods? I guess you would also do pretty well with aroma since there is no heat involved. I will be interested to hear how this goes and the quantities used etc.

[Jimmy Orkin]

Bill is correct on the alcohol extraction. I would start very small. Perhaps a chip of a hop pellet the size of a pin head to a fifth to start with. Work up from there.

[JaySchafer]

Fair enough. Got my hops order in today.

I added 1.0g (according to my cheap Harbor Freight pocket scale) of ~5% AA (forget exactly what AA level) pelletized Cluster hops to a 5th of "Platinum" brand gin, which is apparently the Sazerac company's version of a $9/5th bottle of gin (never tried it before, bought it for the price and the green bottle). That was roughly a combined hop pellet length of 1/2 inch.

After a bit of shaking, the hop pellets are disintegrating and there is a cloud of small green flakes floating up and down in the bottle- imagine a snow globe of specs of hops, in a liquor bottle. Reminds me of algae. I may need to strain this one at some point.

I'll probably let this one sit for a few weeks, then taste a spoonful and see if I need to add more.

Perhops (ha!) adding hops to liquor is like adding hops to wort, and I'll need to add hops later for flavor and aroma. We shall see.

Jay

[JaySchafer]

Bill-

From what little I've read on the subject, my understanding is that the alcohol really extracts the hops bitterness, with maybe a little of the aroma and flavor, but that's pretty vague and I'm not confident as to how accurate that one is. Ideally, I'd like to try using a blend (or multiple additions) of hops, to get both a piney hop flavor as well as a citrusy hop flavor, accenting (but not overwhelming) those in the gin.

The way I see it, even if this doesn't work out as planned I can always add the hopped gin to a beer that needs a touch more bitterness and booze.

P.S.: I'm not a big gin fan either, but with the right ingredients (Tanqueray Rangpur and tonic that runs $6.79 for a 4x187mL pack) it's a nice change of pace in the summer.

[JaySchafer]

Update:

Tasted the gin a few weeks ago and couldn't taste the hops, definitely not enough. The next time I brew (hopefully in a few hours) I'm going to add 5g of hops to it and then wait another week or two. Goal here is a balanced or slightly hop-heavy (but not overwhelmingly hoppy) gin.

I suspect that I'm going to have to get close to an ounce or so to get the flavor I want, but no rush.