Sparging your leaf hops Yes or No?

[cumbrianwolf]

I am curious as I as a matter of course sparge my loose leaf hops but you will have all noticed how much trub is sent to the FV. So I am tempted to quicken things up and lessen the chance of any contaminants of the trub entering the system by not sparging my hops and yes I understand I will lose a few degrees of extract.

So what is your opinions on this option and do you sparge the hops or leave them as a trub filter?
And is it a logical approach or just not worth loosing the extra degrees of potential extract?

[barry44]

what exactly do you mean by sparging your hops?

I am unaware of the method or concept.

[cumbrianwolf]

Basically using the sparge arm that you would use for sparging the grains and gently washing the loose hops in the bottom of the boiler with hot water 80oC to extract any remaining degrees of extract.

[Dave S]

It is certainly usual to leave them on the trub as a filter.

[cumbrianwolf]

Just what I learnt from Dave LInes Big book of brewing as he would flush his hops with the garden rose he used to use as a sparging system as well as John Alexander's book "A guide to craft brewing" I was curious to see what others thought about the subject, but it looks as though it may not be a common practice.

[banjokat]

Well, that's a new one for me. Never heard of it before. I just whirlpool before draining the boiler. The hops are then dumped.

[Jocky]

It's a no from me. They have up to an hour of floating around in litres and litres of boiling wort. Throwing a bit more hot water over them wouldn't seem to do much.

[cumbrianwolf]

You have got me all wrong. What I meant was draining the wort from the boiler you are then left with a hop filter bed. Therefore I sparge these hops to recover some of the maltose sugars that has been absorbed by them.

[barneey]

At least one member of JBK that I know of does sparge his hops.

[Wasp_Box]

So do I. A quick rinse with a kettle of boiling water and that's it. I wouldn't bother with a sparge setup but I'm b*ggered if I'm leaving lots of lovely sugars in the spent hops.

[boingy]

Yes or no?
No.

[cumbrianwolf]

So do I. A quick rinse with a kettle of boiling water and that's it. I wouldn't bother with a sparge setup but I'm b*ggered if I'm leaving lots of lovely sugars in the spent hops.

Me too as they can absorb quite a bit, my Phil's sparge arm is already hooked up to the HLT so there is no hardship to hold it over the hops for a short while.

[thepatchworkdoll]

Its A definite No for me

[b2b]

Yes from me, any topup water goes through the hop bed. Usually give it a clarity and taste check - it's like a late addition hop tea with tiny bit of sugar from whatever's left around the hops. Loads of extra flavour, versus just plain water as the alternative. I've even started planning it into the brew - 10l at the end of a 90l batch to wash through the remaining goodness.

I don't know whether it's meanness (getting the last few % out of the ingredients) or flavour hunting that drives this, but it works for me.

[Jocky]

You have got me all wrong. What I meant was draining the wort from the boiler you are then left with a hop filter bed. Therefore I sparge these hops to recover some of the maltose sugars that has been absorbed by them.

Ah, apologies!

Sounds interesting, would be worth doing a comparison test to see if there's any difference.