Home Brew Forum

Mmmm, would it be worth combining it with a more flavourful hop do you think, for a future brew?

I think it would act as a good 'filler' which would probably just back-up the strong flavoured stuff as you say.

Slightly off topic but it does concern helping preserve delicate hop aroma somewhat. I've been priming all my beers with frozen wort, split from the kettle run off to FV. I use a calculator to work out how much wort to use for priming to a desired co2 volume. The thing I've noticed is not only do the beers prime a lot quicker than using sugar, the carbonation is finer and somehow nicer AND the thing that ties in here, is the hop aroma present in the post boil bitter wort isn't driven off by the primary fermentation and what is driven off (if any) during the bottle conditioning is trapped in the bottle.

Might be worth considering a play with this next time you use a delicate hop.

EDIT PS an added other bonus is the priming wort will only ferment in the bottle exactly the same as the beer so there are no concerns over the effect on the beers abv that's present with whacking sugar in.

Back on topic, I'm still interested to see how the Magnum develops over time, it does smell so very nice out of the bag.

Right I think you are saying that hop aroma is driven off during fermentation, Yes it is, so keeping your fermentation controlled and at 20c should keep more hop volatiles from being driven off with the co2. I doubt priming with sugar or wort in a sealed bottle would have any effect of driving off hop volatiles, the crisper carbonation may display the hop aroma better.

I suppose priming with sugar means that the yeast has to manufacture Invertase to break the regular sugar down into Glucose and Fructose before it can metabolise it so whether or not this causes bi-products I am unsure, I've used sugar for the vast majority of my homebrewing so I don't think its really an issue.

Think 'Brewers Invert Sugar', like candy sugar its bonds have already been broken so Glucose and Fructose are freely available to the yeast so no/less chance of the yeast throwing off-flavours due to its bi-products.

Not quite what I meant. Even a controlled fermentation is going to drive off volatiles surely, it's the nature of the beast otherwise we'd dry hop right there in primary wouldn't we?

All I was saying with my wort priming rather than sugar is the wort used for priming has had no aroma volatiles driven off. If it does occur after priming then at least it's all contained in the sealed bottle, not an open FV.

Ahh, I get ya quite a small portion of Hopped-un-fermented-wort to mass-of-beer but i guess it could have an effect.

I do dry hop right there in primary, close to or after reaching FG/Chill-Gravity.

So you add a frozen Wort-cube to your beer prior to bottling or do you give it a quite boil up to ensure its sterile and aid mixing in the beer?

It's small but not that small, most beer have at least 2 to 2.5 litres of unfermented wort per 25 of beer.

Again, I'd imagine the better results re aroma are with the more delicately hopped beers ie the Magnum in this thread. I doubt you'd notice it in a uber hopped Nelson Sauvin type pale ale.

I freeze the wort in starsan 2l water bottle and whack it straight in the freezer. Thaw it the night before bottling and add the calculated volume to the priming/bottling pot before filling it. It seems to mix in ok by itself, the first few times I separated several bottles from various points in the bottling run. When I had the awful task of drinking them I couldn't spot any difference in carbonation between them.

As we're getting into warmer (supposedly) months and the wee airborne nasties begin to wake up I'll probably begin to give the wort a quick boil before bottling. One of the biggest aids for me is that using this method doesn't affect the final abv or necessitate further calculation, this doesn't matter in homebrewing but when the Customs dudes come a visitng me I don't want my 5% pale ale to actually turn out to be 5.1 to 5.3% because the priming sugar fermented out differently to the beer.

Anyway, I keep diverting this thread.

Magnum IPA, I hope it turns out a good drinker.

There is a pretty wide tolerance on alcohol over here, +/- 0.5% so a 3.5% beer could be anywhere between 3% & 4% its not an exact science.

Really! I'll have a dig around here and see if there are similar tolerances but I'd imagine they're pretty strict. It gives the p.i.t.a. paper pushers something to do.

Just wondering how this Magnum beer turned out....

its alright, nothing spectacular, just nice