Anyone else tried Incognito? I have tried it before but didn’t mix it properly, so I think most of it dropped to the bottom of the FV in a lump. This time giving it a proper stir with hot wort seems to have dissolved it better. I haven’t tried the beer yet.
Looks like totally industrial process oriented stuff. Extracting all the relevant components from hops in an adequate ratio is no simple task, and end user loses the ability to alter this step. Not that many of us take super careful attention to it, but then does the manufacturer of this fluid?
I can see from your experience that manufacturers claim about easy solubility is either exaggerated or misleading. Footprint considerations are also somewhat weird, there is a huge plastic tank compared to thin vacuum wrap for typical products, and waste on technologically adequate extraction is usually enormous.
And my biggest question is - what is the carrier material? Surely pure alpha acid would have to be admitted with a pipet, even if it was shippable like that. So what is that solvent? Looks like malt extract.
I guess storage time should be lower than with pellets or frozen cones. I don’t see anyone brewing less than a few cubic meters a month using it realistically. But it’s awesome to know someone is trying to walk this path. I’m curious how it will end, please post the result!
I’ve had a stinking cold for a week, so there wasn’t any point in tasting it until now, but I think it’s come out quite well. The other hops I used were quite old, so I wanted to see if the extract would give it a bit of a boost, which it did without being too overpowering.
I bought the extract in a 16g sachet and used a set of precision scales to measure out 4g for this 19L brew. That seems to be the sweet spot for “brightening” the flavour and aroma without clobbering the rest of the hops.
https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/incognito-centennial-15g/
It’s intriguing to me. For professionals (even or especially small ones) the loss of product to vegetable matter is a significant concern especially in jurisdictions that are taxed on the wort rather than the product. I’ve heard of 20% or more loss, but that’s got something to do with being a tiny 3hL system and brewing triple IPAs. Still, it is expensive to throw away so much product.
One of the problems, I think, with nonalcoholic beer is that some of the compounds we like best in hops are not water soluble and depend on the alcohol to pull them out of the dry hopping. I wonder if this product changes that calculus.
some of the compounds we like best in hops are not water soluble and depend on the alcohol to pull them out of the dry hopping. I wonder if this product changes that calculus
Even if they are extracted into this fluid (for example, with polyalcohols, maybe just sugars), they still might crash on “fermentation” of nonalcoholic beer, whatever process is used. Maybe if these are strictly nonfermentable polyalcohols and at the same time highly soluble in various conditions (maybe even at 0C fermentation, as one of possible production ways), this might work indeed.
