Hop Pickles

I fermented cucumbers with fresh hops to bring the world Hop Pickles!

Then I put them into little potato sacks and told them to race! It was a fun afternoon.

I got the idea from the IPA Pickles recipe in the Fermented Vegetables book and decided to give it a whirl. But to do this, I had to get my hands on some fresh hops. I hadn't a clue where to start, so I mentioned it to a few people hoping they might know somebody who grows them or had some leftover from home brewing that I could use.

That's when my father in-law Tom stepped up to the plate and told me he could get me the hops I needed. And sure enough, a few weeks later a bag of hops showed up inside my fridge in a tasting glass from Climbing Bines Brewing. I assume he acquired them legally, but until now I never really thought about it.

We live by the 'No Snitch' code in our house, so your secret is safe with me Tom!

With the hops in hand, it was time to start gathering the rest of the goods.

Ingredients

• 13 Hops
• 15 Pickling Cucumbers
• 4 Garlic Cloves, smashed but whole
• 1 1/2 tsp Black Mustard Seed
• 1 1/2 tsp Whole Black Peppercorns
• 1/2 tsp Davids Hickory Smoked Spice
• 1 gallon water
• 3/4 cup sea salt
• Oak Leaves 

Ha, that moose has an itch!

This ferment featured the most "gifted" ingredients I've ever used, which also makes it the lowest cost ferment I've made (which helps when you give jars of ferments away for free). I've already covered how I got the hops, but a few others were given to me as well.

My co-worker Dean happened to be growing an absurd amount of cucumbers in his garden this year, and I was the lucky enough to get some. I was also growing cucumbers this year, so I combined our harvest in this recipe and didn't have to buy any.

And they all got along like old friends.

My brother David had made a spice mix from peppers he had grown that I used. I was a little hesitant to make these too hot because of the whole 50 Shades of Fresno incident. And when taking a sniff of the spice mix made me cough for 3 minutes, I considered just omitting it (I also considered sniffing it again, which seems like an unhealthy response). But I liked the idea of using something he made to add even more uniqueness to the pickles, so I put in a small amount and hoped for the best.

I also used oak leaves in this to keep the pickles crisp. The oak leaves add tannin to the ferment which keeps the pickles crunchy, because nobody likes a soft pickle. Getting oak leaves is a little different than getting the other ingredients, as these are literally just leaves off of an oak tree. So you don't buy them from a store. Instead, you walk around your neighborhood until you find an oak tree that's not too far into somebody's yard, and then you start grabbing leaves off of it until you feel like your going to get spotted and have to explain what your doing (making pickles of course!), so you take what you've got and hurry home! What a rush!

Just posting this picture of my loot makes my heart race!

Process

Making Hop Pickles, or any pickles for that matter, is really simple. First you prep the pickles by scrubbing the flower ends clean and then soaking them in cold water for an hour or two (if they are fresh off the vine that day you can skip the soaking).

Next you mix your salt into the water until its dissolved. Then add the rest of the spices and mix them around. And last, you add the pickles, hops, and garlic.

Then you admire those glorious hops swimming with the cucumbers and take a picture, like this.

After everything was mixed, I pushed it all under the brine with a plate, topped the plate with a weight so it stayed submerged, covered the top of the crock to keep anything from falling in, then sent it into the basement to ferment and left for the weekend to go camping. Camping has nothing to do with fermenting pickles, but I'm bringing it up anyway.

When I emerged from the woods I checked on the pickles, which at that point were smelling like pickles (that's a good thing), and then jarred them after 6 days of fermenting.

I also strategically placed a hop at the top of each jar because I thought it looked cool.

Results

These came out great! In pickle lingo these are considered full sours. They have a good sour/salty taste to them, and stayed crunchy thanks to those oak leaves. 

I don't think I can pick out the hop flavor in them. Maybe if I did a batch without hops and tried it side by side I would, I'm not sure, but in any event they certainly don't have a dominating flavor. They do make the pickles look cool though when you see the hops in the jar, so I still think it was worth doing. I do taste David's spice mix though. Not enough to consider the pickles 'hot', but you can pick up a mild heat in there. That's impressive considering I only used 1/2 a teaspoon in a gallon of water. It must taste like eating fire in large amounts.

Our delivery girl loves her job....and pickles. Mostly she loves pickles.

Once the pickles were jarred I slapped some tape on them for labels (because I was too lazy to get a real label done in time), handed out the few jars I had, and then ate the rest of them while searching Netflix for mediocre horror movies to watch (hello Shakma). And whenever you can end your fermented pickle post by bringing up a movie about an aggressive baboon that attacks medical students in a tower, then you know your doing something right. Cheers!