Hop pellet problems

[Garth]

Did Clotworthy yesterday which one of the Irish lads posted (cheers), as it sounded great, brewday went soooo smooth until I tried the run off from the boiler, I used whole hops for the Northdown and Challenger but thought I would use up some of my Cascade pellets for the ones at 80C, big mistake,

Got about 10-12 litres out through the cfc when the flow started to really go slow, at the end it was barely a trickle and then stopped, I thought the flowers would hold back some of the disintegrated pellets, nope, jammed the H&G manifold well and proper. If this brew dosen't end up infected or summat I'll be very surprised, as I had the hop filter out with unclean hands under the tap to try and clear the slots.

Well in the end I got about 16-17 litres in the fv out of a 20 litre (cornie sized) brew, broke me heart to chuck the rest, didn't have a clean hop bag or anything. But it's fermenting well with WLP-004 Irish Ale. and smells fantastic with the Cascade.

So, how does anyone else use pellets and how does your system cope? cause I've still got more to use, or do you just avoid.....?

come to think of it, my last 'pelleted brew' was Amarillo and that was quite slow run-off, but it was one of my best loved brews.

[Bionicmunky]

To try and alleviate you rinfeciton worries, I had the same problem brew before last. Getting my hands in the boiler didn't infect the brew.

[Garth]

hmmm, I may be lucky, but the wort was already quite cool as it'd been sitting there for ages due to the trickley run-off

time will tell, I may have made some interesting vinegar for me chips...

[mysterio]

The old blow-back technique works well for clearing stuck hop manifolds and stuck mashes. I've only used pellets in fairly small amounts along with whole flower hops and they dont seem to give my manifold much bother. It's a H&G manifold with dozens of extra tiny holes drilled in and some extra slots. I'm doing a beer with pellets tomorrow so i'll let you know how I get on. Here's some pics. I'm thinking of sewing some fine wire mesh around it ala Aleman's hopstopper clone for dealing with pellets.

[Garth]

cheers for that Mysty, mines exactly the same, so until I get me shiny hopstopper plumbed into the new boiler, I think I'll do the extra slots and holes thing, thanks

[Craphaus]

Hey Garth did you whirlpool your wort first? Usually this will sit the hop pile in the middle of the kettle. I usually have no problems combining whole hops and pellets so long as the ratio is good.
In other words say around 70% whole and 30% pellets the hop hops act like a filter bed from the whole hops being the majority.
Difference being I use a stainless false bottom in my boiler when doing this and change to a plain copper pickup tube if using pellets only.

[roger the dog]

I've only used pellets once Garth, in my last brew actually, and it was only a small amount - 15g of Amarillo, but I put them in a Hop & Grape hop boiling bag

I was a bit concerned that it might get burnt onto the elements but it didn't & the run-off was trouble free.

[stevezx7r]

I did a single hop beer the other month (Amarillo) using pellets and it was fine, I used a custom H+G strainer which had slots not holes cut into it. Not too keen on the hop flavour but it didn't result in a stuck mash.

[Buzz]

Garth, what quantity of hop pellets did you use

I'm thinking of using some Fullers Goldings that I was given in my next brew on Thursday. I'm only planning to use 10g for the last 15 mins (about 15%) of the total hops - the others will be whole. Don't fancy having the same problem.

[subsub]

I always use a hop bag for pellets, there is no slowdown on my system

[macleanb]

Had similar (worse) my my recent AG#4 which had 25g of cascade pellets and an obscene amount of whole leaf styrians. Flow from the kettle stopped withion a fraction of a seconf to literally a drip. Blew back (couldnt) blew harder BLUB BLUB BLUB, manifold popped out the back of the tap (felt like superman! - dumb superman). Had to get my entire arm in the bucket of cooled wort and get it back in - of dear. However seems to be fermenting fine (3 days) no funny smells (yet)...

Any microbe hop-headed enough to survive deserves a drink at my expense!

[Martin the fish]

I had problems with using pellets. They always blocked my hop strainer. So i now use a large grain bag. I throw all my pellets in this, tie up the top with copper wire and bung the lot into boiler. It works very well. My Historic IPA used 354g of EKG in pellet form and i had no problems at all with them in the grain bag. Plus it's fairly easy to squeeze out all the lovely juices too.

[smp465]

Used pellets/leaf mix once, putting a hop bag over my hop strainer before i ran the wort in. Didn't block, but i did get some bits of hop come through the bag/strainer and into the FV. Took a long time for that beer to clear if i recall??

[Garth]

Hey Garth did you whirlpool your wort first? Usually this will sit the hop pile in the middle of the kettle. I usually have no problems combining whole hops and pellets so long as the ratio is good.
In other words say around 70% whole and 30% pellets the hop hops act like a filter bed from the whole hops being the majority.
Difference being I use a stainless false bottom in my boiler when doing this and change to a plain copper pickup tube if using pellets only.

nope, and I do know about the technique having done it before, but I forgot this time, damn eh?

Steve, I'm not impressed wit my latest Amarillo beer either, the one before was excellent, If it was the 4% AA Brupaks ones they had something wrong with them, even John admitted it, I think he said heat damage, bit late if you've just ruined a batch with them. The lot before was summat like 8-9%AA pellets and they were excellent.

Buzz, out of a total of 63g of hops, 30g were the Cascade pellets, try the whirlpool method, you may get away with it.

[Jymbo]

How did the Clotworthy turn out, Garth? I'd be interested to hear how it tasted. Mine was a decent brew but I think it could have used a bit more Cascase towards the end of the boil to get closer to the original.