Stale Hops from Crosby & Baker

[thisjrp4]

Does anyone find that Crosby & Baker hops are stale lately? I bought 2 oz of Styrian last summer from a shop upstate NY, and the hops smelled like cardboard. I recently got the same whiff from a C&B pack of Amarillo from a different shop and just now from a pack of C&B Cascade from a third shop.

What's going on here? Its not that bad in the Cascade, but compared to the Northern Brewer I'm using for bittering there is no floral aroma at all. I'm probably going to dump the Cascade and throw some more NB in for aroma in my pale ale.

 

[Oldsock]

Sorry to hear. I've gone to buying hops in bulk for the most part. Are these stores telling you what harvest the hops are from? Are they storing them cold?

 

[thisjrp4]

I buy bulk too from Hopsdirect, and their stuff is great. The NB I had is from Hopsdirect, and with only an ounce in a small bowl I could smell it from a few feet away. The C&B Cascade was lifeless. Each of the 3 shops stores everything cold, and I store hops in the freezer.

How can you tell the harvest year on the C&B package? In small print is U09 on the label. Could they be 2009 harvest? That could explain it.

 

[Oldsock]

Sounds like it to me. I've also been to homebrew stores that keep their displayed hops cold, but have more in the back that aren't...

 

[thisjrp4]

I emailed C&B about the problem, I'll post their reply. I wrote to them saying I'm buying aroma and flavor hops batch to batch and finding out on brew day that I have stale hops kind of wrecks the brew for me.